


The Thedosian Farmer's Almanac

by Bookish_Bell



Series: The Thedosian Farmer's Almanac [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Bees, But she's been there a while, Canon-Typical Violence, Cultural References, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, M/M, Modern Girl in Thedas, Multi, The world is dark but this story doesn't have to be, farming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookish_Bell/pseuds/Bookish_Bell
Summary: Koza's plan was to have a farm, stay alive, and maybe save some people along the way. She's just really bad at telling people no.This is the story of how a goatherd joins the Inquisition and fights to save all of Thedas with vegetables, goat cheese, and public education. No, really.





	1. Chapter One: To ward off bad dreams, rub garlic on your heels

**Author's Note:**

> Update schedule is once a week. 
> 
> Feed back is always welcome. Please let me know what you liked and what you want to see. I could always use some more ideas!
> 
> Let me know if there's anything you think that I've forgotten or if anyone seems OOC.
> 
> Also let me know if you see ways that I can improve my writing.
> 
> Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (I could use an editor if someone is willing to lend their skills)

Ch. 1

Daily Almanac advice: “To ward off bad dreams, rub garlic on your heels”

The sun was high in the sky and sweat rolled heavily down her neck as Koza continued her work in the field. She had been up since before dawn, watering the crops, feeding the chickens, and bringing in the harvest, and she would normally be inside and resting by this time of day. There was little sense in trying to work when the sun and the heat of the day were at their peak, but the yield was good and the demand was high. 

However, even as short and as limber as she was, picking pole beans was a tiring and backache-inducing task. She could feel the dehydration headache growing at her temples even as a gripping ache spread along her lower back. 

She stood up for a moment to stretch and wipe the sweat from her eyes when she saw them. 

There was a group running towards her on the horizon – motley-looking, but all looking worn and afraid. She could see a dwarven woman with a bow in the lead, helping a much taller, likely injured comrad along. Behind them came a group of Templars in full armor with swords drawn and bloodied. 

Koza cursed and reached beside her to grab her polearm that had been nestled securely against the half-filled bin of beans. 

Goose, the mabari mutt who had been napping in the shade of the beanpoles, startled awake, his pointed ears perking up and a snarl forming on his lips. 

“Company!” Koza shouted, “we have company!”

She heard a shout from further afield, letting her know that Toph had heard her and would alert the others. She sent Goose off to guard the livestock as she ran to confront the approaching forces. 

The fleeing group was small, only two human men, a female dwarf, and a male elf. They looked exhausted and beaten. One of the humans clearly had a broken arm and the elf had a sizable gash along his left hip. They were in no condition to turn and fight. They bore the mark that Koza knew belonged to, or would belong to the inquisition. She swore quietly and called out to them.

“Get to the farm house,” Koza ordered them. “You’ll be safer in there. We’ll deter the armored bastards.”

The dwarf nodded and the group moved past Koza as she held a firm stance between the Templars and her home. They would not make it past her. They would not harm her people.

The Templars bore down quickly. 

Koza’s hands shook on the bare wood pole of her guisarme. She was hot, tired, and facing down a force of seven Templars strong, but she would not be moved. 

This had all seemed so much easier a decade ago, when there had been a computer screen and the sense of theatre between her and Thedas. Most everything had been easier then. On some days, the bad ones mostly, it still seemed more like a nightmare than reality. 

Shortly before the Templars got within her range, arrows hit them from the direction of the farm house. Two fell back dead and another two were staggered. 

Toph, with his battle axe and Lorn with her staff ran from the farmhouse to join Koza in the fight. 

Together, they were brutal and efficient.

Koza kept the Templars at a distance and distracted with the longer reach of her polearm. She thrust deftly, catching the Templars in the face with the sharp forward point or hooking their swords with the cruel curve of her blade, throwing them off balance. An occasional clang and thud rang out when she hit them with the flattened hammer edge on the other side of the staff, denting their armor and damaging the body beneath. One Templar tried grabbing her weapon to pull her in close. He didn’t expect her to drop the guisarme with one hand and stab him in the wrist with a dagger, all the while shouting about how his mother must have liked to fuck sheep.

Meanwhile, Toph silently cleaved the distracted and off-balanced in half. He was a giant of a man and had plenty of strength to show for it. The shrill sound of metal scraping metal was ear-piercing and as bone chilling as it ever was. 

Together, Toph and Koza worked to keep the Templars off of Lorn as she alternated casting barriers over the two of them and sending fireballs to burn the Templars alive. 

More arrows came from the dwarf woman who was now standing at the house doorway, and soon enough, all that was left of the Templars were corpses on the ground. 

Koza grimaced at the scent of fresh blood, bile, and smoldering flesh. She could feel the blood that had splattered on her face mixed with her sweat drying and getting tacky. With the battle over, she turned to Toph and Lorn and asked them to strip the bodies and move them to the burn pile. No need to waste metal or attract bears. 

Toph patted Koza on the shoulder as he moved to do as she asked. He knew how much she hated these little skirmishes that had been getting more and more common since the mage rebellion and especially since the giant green hole had opened up in the sky. He and Ephiran were used to the blood and death. Some days, it seemed like Ephiran preferred it. But Toph knew that Koza was softer. She could gut a demon with the best of them, shouting curses to the heavens as she did it, but she would prefer to be using her hands to dig a furrow or plant a seed. There was as much honor in that as there was in battle. 

Inside the house, Rex, a tall male elf who had entered Koza’s house two years ago, claimed himself the housekeeper, and hadn’t left since, was tending to the wounded guests along with a couple of the other, more transient farm-hands. 

Many refugees had come and gone recently, seeking refuge and food from her household, and those in the house had become well accustomed to injured guests. 

The dwarf woman was the first to speak. 

“Thanks for the rescue,” she said, her voice strong and clear despite her obvious exhaustion. Dirt lay in a fine layer over her skin and clothes, indicating to Koza that the woman had been traveling for at least a few days and had probably had little time to rest with how bad the Hinterlands had gotten since the fall of the Conclave. “We thought we were goners when the Templars showed up! You’re really handy with that pig-sticker of yours.” She gestured blithely to the battle-worn polearm that was still in Koza’s hand. “I’m Agent Harding. Lace Harding. You have no idea how happy I am to see friendly faces around here.”

Koza’s eyes widened slightly. She recognized that name. She recognized that dwarf, and not just from her time in Fereldan. In the weeks since the breach had opened, she had known that the events that she had played in Dragon Age: Inquisition over a decade ago had begun, but it was different to actually be living it. She wondered, just like she had wondered during the blight, if she would survive it. 

“Pleased to meet you Lace. I’m Koza, farmer and keeper of this household. You lot look more organized than the sort we’ve been getting lately. You don’t look much like refugees if you don’t mind me saying,” Koza stated, neither pressing Lace with questions or denying that she knew that something was going on. 

The injured elf groaned as one of the farmhands put a poultice on his hip. Lace Harding winced and then locked eyes with Koza, staring her down straight faced and serious.

“We’re a forward party from a group called the Inquisition. We’re the only group that’s working on closing that hole in the sky and we have a person who can do it. My party here was sent to assess the situation in the hinterlands and help establish a refugee camp,” Harding gave Koza a sly look at this point, a look that made Koza feel slightly nervous, yet excited. 

“It would be highly useful to have someone with both access to provisions and fighting skills at such a camp. It’d also be useful to have someone else who knows the area well. I grew up near Redcliffe and I’ve heard of you and your farm. You’re not the type to hide away when people need help. So,” Harding leaned in conspiratorially, and Koza couldn’t help but lean in as well, “are you in?”

Koza took a moment to look around her house. She looked at the couple of farmhands that were inside and tending to the scouts; most of them were refugees themselves. She looked at Rex, a former slave from Tevinter who would likely go hunting down the Venatori once knowledge of them became common across the land. She thought of the men, women, and children of all ages who she had seen displaced across the Hinterlands, first by the blight, then by the mage-templar conflict, and now by the uncertainty caused by the giant green hole in the sky, and she breathed deeply. She held out her hand to brace arms with Harding in the traditional Fereldan manner and smiled. 

“I’m in. Don’t know what you’ve heard about me or my farm, but if there’s work to do, you know us Ferelden field girls will get it done,” Koza claimed, a crooked smile making itself at home on her face.

Rex shared a dubious and long-suffering look with Lorn who now stood in the main doorway.

“You’re going to trust a Chantry group? One that’s calling itself the Inquisition? I had thought you smarter than that Ser,” Lorn intoned, loud, low and steady as she always was. 

The inquisitor members looked nervous at the sight of the very large Qunari who was now blocking the exit. She was intimidating by her size alone, but the dark look on her face and the still flaming staff in her hand which announced her as a mage made her downright menacing.

Tension was rising in the room as Lorn and Rex stared down the Inquisition members. The farmhands, used to following Rex’s command within the house, ceased their activities in tending to the injuries and began to back away. 

Koza walked over and grabbed a wet cloth from one of the hands and sat herself on the floor at the feet of the injured human man. She began to wipe away the blood from his arm and gestured for Lorn to approach and heal him.

“I have to do something,” she said quietly to Lorn and Rex, willing them to listen to her. “There’s a hole in the sky and tears in the land that are letting demons through and corrupting both people and spirits. We have to do something. I’ve cared for this land for nearly a decade now. Don’t tell me that I should stop caring for it now.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” commanded Rex. “You can do your good from here. Provide them with some food in exchange for coin and let them be on their way. You owe them nothing,” Rex said in his usual imperious manner. He stood tall with his arms crossed. He had always stood tall, ever since the day he had escaped from Tevinter, and he would be damned if he would ever bow low again, be it to Vints, the Chantry, or this Inquisition.

As Lorn moved grudgingly from the doorway to heal the man, Koza reached up and grabbed Rex’s hand gently in her own. 

“Come on, Rex. You know me better than that. I’m a fool who will get into the most trouble I possibly can. Better that I cause my trouble away from here so that I’ll have a safe haven to return to.”

Rex growled deep in his throat, saying “I’d rather you cause trouble where I can mitigate the damage, but I suppose that’s too much to ask.” He didn’t remove his hand from hers.

Koza turned back to Lace Harding with a smile on her face and said, “You heard him! Rest here for the night. We can travel to the camp tomorrow, well rested and with provisions. I’m not saying that I’ll join the Inquisition,” she said, largely to ease the dark look on Lorn’s face, “but I can provide you with aid for now.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Cassandra’s sword was covered in a rancid mixture of demon and human blood and her heart was heavy as a stone. The once bucolic Hinterlands were a mess of bodies, rifts, and burnt homesteads. The templars had gone mad, leaving from the circles and abandoning the chantry, and the mages were no better. There were no clues on how to find the truth in this chaos. She had failed in her quest to protect the Divine and all of Thedas was paying the price.

Heavy breathing from her side brought her attention to the recently dubbed “Herald of Andraste,” and she couldn’t help a small snarl from rising to her lips. 

The Herald was a large man, a “Vashoth.” His grey skin, large curling horns, and whispy white hair were off-putting to those not used to Qunari, and his nature which practically screamed “absent-minded mage” did little to endear him to the seeker. 

Cassandra valued his willingness to come with her and work to close the breach, but she despaired at his incompetence and childishness. Surely this was not who the maker would send in their hour of greatest need? A Qunari mage who would rather spend days watching the clouds and was utterly unused to long travel and combat?

There was no denying though, that the herald looked exhausted and ready to drop.

“The crossroads is not far,” she, looking straight ahead to avoid making eye-contact with her companions. A daft mage, a lying story-teller, and a fade-touched wanderer. This is what she, what they had been reduced to. She didn’t know what to believe in just yet. “Be on alert for signs of battle. Lelianna’s scouts sent word of Templar and mage attacks recently.”

“Great,” intoned Varric. “The whole world’s gone mad. What do you want to bet that the camp isn’t even there anymore? We’ve been walking for days Seeker.”

“It would help,” huffed Cassandra, “if some of us were more used to travel. But there is no sense in pressing forward in dangerous territory when we are tired.”

Adaar ducked his head apologetically and inched away from the angry seeker and closer to Solas. He was, without a doubt, intimidated by Cassandra and was doing his best to stay in her good graces, but he wasn’t used to this sort of life.

He had traveled for a couple of years with a mercenary band, but he was young and too gentle by far, and the leader had recognized that. 

Instead of sending him out on missions, she had often kept him at the home base, ready to heal the returning injured and prepare camp for the night. He had gotten very good at healing cuts without a thought and preparing a stew with meager ingredients, but he was a novice in battles and in the rigorous traveling pace that the Seeker wanted to keep. He knew he was soft, and a liability as his former commander would say, but he would do his best. He had to. He looked at the glowing green light in his left palm and then at the light in the sky. He had to or he would die. But he was so very tired.

Adaar continued to march forward, with his eyes trained on the ground and not the horizon. He had to look where he stepped so that he wouldn’t stumble in his exhaustion. He hadn’t slept for more than a few hours each night, his mind plagued by the thought that those who had come with him to the Conclave were dead with nothing left for funeral rites. When he did get to sleep, he was disturbed by spirits and demons, all worked up to a froth in a place where the veil was naturally thin and after such a cataclysmic event. He had to focus every ounce of his concentration on moving forward without tripping or holding up the stern-faced seeker, so he was taken by surprise by a loud voice calling out –

“Halt! Identify yourselves. This area is under the protection of the Inquisition.”

Adaar’s head jerked up in surprise and he saw not the desolate, war-torn camp that he had been dreading, but a well-organized, teeming tent town built around a few older buildings. People of all sorts moved quickly from one area to another, carrying items and moving materials swiftly and surely. Everyone seemed to have a place and a task. The sight gave him hope.

Cassandra stepped forward to greet the guard. “Lelianna should have informed you of our arrival. The Herald is here to meet with Mother Giselle.”

The guard nodded and pointed them in the direction of one of the houses on the hill. “Mother Giselle is over that way with a couple of sisters. They’ve been tending to the wounded. But I think she’s in a meeting with the Field Specialist.”

Cassandra scowled and took a step forward, looming over the guard. The guard took a step back.

“I have not heard of a Field Specialist. Who is this person, and what is their role here?” Cassandra demanded to know. Lelianna had warned Cassandra that the Crossroads was a pitiful camp being barely held together by Corporal Vale. This was no such camp, and Cassandra needed to know if other forces were moving in.

“Geeze Seeker, give the guy a little breathing room. This specialist is probably one of Nightingale’s,” drawled Varric, distracting Cassandra.

The guard, finding his voice now that he was no longer under Cassandra’s piercing stare, said, “no, not one of the Inquisitions.. She’s the one who turned this from a mess and a target into something that’s working. Her title, well, i-it’s a bit of a joke actually. She’s a farmer, so…field specialist, you know?”

Adaar chuckled slightly at the pun, but Cassandra looked sternly unamused. 

“She has been leading you? What about Corporal Vale?”

The guard shifted his weight from foot to foot, still clearly nervous. “Corporal Vale advises her, ser. Or she advises him. I’m not really sure how it works. But she brought food and supplies, and after that, she started telling people where to go and what to do and it worked. Corporal Vale still commands the Inquisition members here, but the refugees listen to her better.”

Cassandra nodded, looking contemplative. “Then we shall have to speak with her as well. We could use some resourcefulness in the Inquisition.”

She bid the guard farewell and led the party into the Crossroads camp. 

The door to the house the guard had pointed them towards was open, and they could hear the conversation going on inside as they approached. 

“Is the Chantry really refusing to provide supplies until a new Divine is chosen? That could take years,” said a woman, Koza, with an odd, almost-Ferelden accent.

An older, more cultured and Orlesian voice answered with, “they have chosen to wait and see. There is much to be decided in the coming days and many different voices that shout to be heard. It is up to us to provide in the interim.”

Koza knew that the Chantry Mother was doing what she could. She and the sisters had been working themselves bare to take care of the refugees, but the Chantry’s refusal to help and Mother Giselle’s seemingly calm acceptance of that refusal still caused her ire. 

“Pardon my language Mother, but that’s nugshit. Big decisions are one thing, but choosing to help those in need is something the Chantry should do regardless of who’s at the helm.”

The revered Mother looked displeased at this statement, the corners of her mouth turned down, and the skin around her eyes tight. “And that is why we are here, to provide what we can to the Maker’s children. But we are fallible and do not always walk the path of Andraste. It is not for us to decide what the Chantry should or should not do. It is up to all of us to walk our own path to serve the Maker.”

Koza, standing next to the revered Mother shrugged and crossed her arms. “Then I will leave you to your ministry, Mother, and go help people with my resources and my own two hands. This is a discussion we can continue later. For now, it looks like you have guests.”

The revered Mother inclined her head in agreement and beckoned the Herald of Andraste and his companions into the hut as Koza turned to leave. 

She had work to do, and none of it would get done if she spent her time being mad at the Chantry for its refusal to help. The revered Mother and the sisters were there doing what they could, and that would have to be enough for now. In the meantime, she could lead a small party out to gather some elfroot for potions and some rams for dinner and avoid notices from the party of the Herald. The glare that she had seen on Cassandra’s face was intense! 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Koza made it back to the camp a few hours before sundown in a much better mood, with her bag brimming with soft green leaves of elfroot and ram’s blood under her fingernails. Hard, physical work always had a way of making problems seem smaller and life more manageable. However, her mood dimmed as she was grabbed by the arm and jerked to the side by Cassandra.

“You there, you are the one who has been leading this camp?” Cassandra charged. Her grip on Koza’s arm was firm but not painful, and Koza had silently reminded herself of what Cassandra had recently been through to calm herself before she answered.

“Pretty sure Corporal Vale is the one who’s official in charge. I just organize things and provide supplies,” Koza claimed, smiling at Cassandra even though the smile didn’t meet her eyes. “If you don’t mind, I have to get these plants to the healers before they’re no good anymore,” she said, gesturing to the sack full of elfroot. 

Cassandra, noticing Koza’s tenseness, let go of her arm and took a step back. “I will accompany you then. There are things that I feel we must discuss.”

Koza shrugged and began walking, Cassandra easily falling into step beside her.

“Corporal Vale claims that this camp was a near failure.”

Koza made a face and tilted her head to the side. “Well, yeah. Very few fighters, tons of panicked refugees, no food, no clean water, and mages and Templars pushing in from every side. What’d you expect?”

And honestly, the place had been a mess when she had arrived. Rebel mages were attacking and refugees and soldiers alike fallen under their assault. She had seen the burnt body of her old neighbor, Dennison curled on the ground, his arms still around his grandau-

She shook her head to dislodge those thoughts. The mages had been taken care of and the bodies of the dead and been given their rites. It didn’t do to dwell on the dead. Especially in a place like Thedas where so very many ended up dead. 

Still, if she had arrived sooner-

“He claims that you changed that,” Cassandra said.

A frown pulled at Koza’s mouth. “I brought food. That has a tendency to make a bad situation better. I’m also a fair hand at organizing things. That’s all they needed was a little food and structure.”

Several people waved to Koza and greeted her as they passed. A little girl ran by and tugged on her pant leg until Koza fetched a small flower from her sack and placed it in the girl’s waiting hand.

Cassandra observed all of this with sharp eyes and a keen mind.

“The refugees look to you for leadership and guidance.”

“Most of them are my neighbors. They’re farmers, tailors, and shepherds too. They want to deal with someone familiar to them,” stated Koza. She well knew that people tended to listen more to those who they thought were like them. There was something about similar backgrounds or appearances that always made people more sympathetic and willing to listen. 

“The inquisition could benefit from someone with your skills.”

“So I’ve been told. Repeatedly. But let me ask you this, does the Inquisition really need a farmer? Because that’s what I am. I know about plants and dirt and livestock, not battle and the fade and demons.” Koza sighed and handed her sack off to one of the healers before turning to face Cassandra.  
This wasn’t a conversation that she felt ready to have. 

“Look, your lot is going to need a place to stay for the night, so come stay at mine. We can discuss it then. Meet me by the east entrance when you’re ready to go.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Shortly after dinner, Cassandra and Koza settled into the office room of the farm house to have their discussion. The room was small, windowless, and intimate, perfect for important conversations. It was the type of room that secrets easily hid in, such as the trapdoor to a hidden basement that Cassandra didn’t even know was under her feet. Koza knew it was there, but she didn’t know that Rex was right below it, ready to listen in and find out what the Inquisition knew and what they wanted.

“You are a woman of duty,” Cassandra began, her posture rigid and regal as she attempted to read the woman seated across from her. Cassandra had seen what Koza had done at the refugee camp. Though the woman denied it and tried to downplay her role, she was the one who the refugees and even the Inquisition members looked to for leadership, and she had done a good job of it. The refugees there were safe and fed, which was more than could be said about much of Fereldan. Cassandra did not believe for one moment that the woman before her was just a farmer.

Koza held herself proudly, with good posture and surefootedness. She didn’t more like a soldier but more like a courtier. She had clear, healthy skin, hair, and nails that didn’t generally come from a life spent in the harsh conditions of the Hinterlands. However, several of the refugees professed to knowing Koza. They claimed that she had lived at this farm for years at the very least and had been a good but quiet neighbor. It painted an odd picture that Cassandra was determined to figure out. She had already sent a raven to Leliana, alerting her to the latest mystery.

However, thought Koza was a relative unknown, she had done good work at the Crossroads and obviously cared for the people. She wasn’t afraid to shy away from hard work and knew how to lead. She could be a valuable asset to the Inquisition or a dangerous foe. 

Cassandra knew which she preferred.

“You know this land well. You know its people. You could do more to help them,” She said.

Koza looked at Cassandra incredulously. “Really, you’re telling me that I could be doing more? What more is it that you’re expecting me to be doing?”

Cassandra frowned. “That…didn’t come out right. Your work could be more. It could have more of an impact, change more lives. The Inquisition can offer that.” She shifted closer to Koza until they were standing intimately close, her mouth next to Koza’s ear. “Think of your home here, your people. They will be destroyed if the Inquisition does not prevail. The Herald of Andraste is the only one who can close the rifts. The forces of the Inquisition can help you protect you and yours.”

Koza stood her ground, though the Seeker was several inches taller than her and looming over hear as they spoke. Her voice was even and calm as she replied, but the joy that had been in it earlier was notably absent. 

“I understand. Really, I do. They said the world was ending when that breach opened up. I almost believed it too. People have already died, and more people will until this is fixed. You can count on me to do my part Seeker, but leave my people out of it. Your Inquisition is going to need food and supplies, right? My people know how to manage this farm, keep it running without me. I’ll join your Inquisition, and my people will stay here in my stead. Can I count on the Inquisition to have people to defend them and any shipments?”

Cassandra stepped back, pleased with Koza’s easy agreement. “You have my word. Your people will be protected. Come, let us rejoin the others and rest before tomorrow is upon us.”

Cassandra left the small office space, leaving Koza behind. 

Once she was sure that Cassandra was out of sight, Koza turned and tapped on the trapdoor three times with her heel. She then crouched low to the ground and whispered, “it’s not polite to eavesdrop, Rex. And you always forget to put the rug back when you use this little hidey-hole.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

For the first time in over a month, Adaar felt comfortable. He had a warm meal in his belly, he was sitting in a chair actually fit a Qunari, and he was being ordered around by a large, intimidating Qunari woman. It was just like home. For a moment, he could pretend that it was just like old times, and there wasn’t a hole in the sky and a painful mark on his hand. He liked to pretend.

Lorn stared down at the child, the imekari seated before her and huffed. He may be of age physically but just barely, and emotionally he was obviously still a youngling. She grabbed one of his horns and pulled it to the side. “Are you listening or are you lost in the fade again?”

Adaar just hummed, a sleepy, dazed look in his eyes. 

“It’s useless. This is useless. I don’t do useless things,” Lorn moaned. “This is the one you want to follow to help?” She asked, looking accusingly at Koza. This was obviously a fool’s joke. Surely Koza couldn’t be planning on leaving with the imekari. 

Koza simply smiled and pointed to the imekari’s left hand. “He can close the rifts. Seems like as good a reason as any to help him.”

Cassandra watched suspiciously from the corner of the room as the Herald was examined and moved about by Lorn. 

“So you’re coming with us then,” asked Varric from his seat by the lit fireplace. “Gonna’ join the Inqusition?”

Lorn looked at Koza and glared. Koza glared back. Lorn made a short, likely rude gesture with her hand. Koza winked. 

“Don’t you da-,” began Lorn.

“Yeah,” confirmed Koza. “It’s probably a bad idea, but count me in.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” said Lorn.

Koza took a long look at Lorn, surprising her with the sudden gravity of her stare. 

“I need you here,” Koza said. “Things are already bad, but chances are, they’re going to get worse before they get better. You’re the best healer I know, and you know how to run the farm. I need you here to keep our people alive and keep the crops growing.”

An ugly expression of distaste crossed Lorn’s face. She knew that Koza was going to do what Koza was going to do. Her boss was stubborn like that. It was part of what had kept Lorn by her side for the past couple of years. That didn’t mean that she had to like it. 

She stomped off to the kitchen to slam cupboards and make some tea until she could calm herself.  
“Ah,” exclaimed Koza, “while you’re in the kitchen, could you get some garlic for this kid? He looks dead on his feet.”


	2. Chapter Two: Plow deep while sluggards sleep, and you will have corn to sell or keep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Koza gets busy and an old friend appears.

Daily Almanac Advice: “Plow deep while sluggards sleep, and you will have corn to sell or keep”  
___________________________________________________________________________

“Do you always daydream so much,” Koza asked Adaar as he stumbled over a rock that he was too distracted to see. The qunari was surprisingly uncoordinated and gangly, reminding Koza of young goats learning how to handle their legs.

Adaar ducked his head, hiding his face and his red cheeks from her view. “I just…I just think a lot, I guess. And I try to concentrate, but it’s easy to get distracted.”

Varric laughed and moved forward to walk closer to Koza and Adaar. 

“Yeah, Dreamer here walked into a tree the other day while watching a butterfly or some shit. The kid has nothing but wool between his horns,” Varric said.

Adaar’s hand went up to touch the small patch of frizzy white hair between his horns. Koza’s hand went over her mouth to mask her laughter. 

“There is no shame in thinking,” Solas quipped from ahead. “Perhaps you should try it sometime,” he said to Varric.

Adaar stumbled over a fallen branch and nearly fell to the ground.

“Although, perhaps it is best for you to focus on walking and save dreaming for when you are in bed,” Solas said to Adaar. 

“I would appreciate it if you all would stop dreaming or thinking and instead focus on returning to Haven,” commanded Cassandra.

Koza impulsively reached out and grabbed Adaar’s unmarked hand in her own. It seemed odd that his grey skin was smooth and soft when compared to her own hands, which were callused and rough from many years of hard work. 

“It’s okay Adaar. You can still have time to dream. I’ll help lead you back home,” she said with a smile.

“So, Koza,” began Varric, “that’s a name I’ve never heard before. Where’s it from?”

Koza heard the meaning underneath his words. Where are you from? You don’t belong. It was something she had gotten used to since ending up in Thedas, though most people were much blunter about it. 

“It’s a family name. Just about all I have left of my family,” she said, trying to keep her voice light and happy. “It means goat. It works both because we were a bunch of goatherds and because my family was made up of a bunch of hard-headed and hardy fools, myself included.”

Adaar squeezed her hand and Koza remembered that he had probably lost his family in the blast at the Conclave – some of them at the very least. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and took in his tired slump and red-rimmed eyes. He wasn’t stumbling so much due to day dreaming than to sheer exhaustion. He didn’t look like he had slept well in weeks. 

“There was even a family rumor that a distant relative got a little too fond of the goats if you catch my meaning,” she continued, trying to lighten the mood. “I hear you lot have similar jokes about some Fereldans and their maba-“

“That is disgusting. You will stop this conversation immediately,” Cassandra ordered.

Solas seemed to be studiously ignoring all of them.

From behind, Koza could see Cassandra’s ears turning bright red. Adaar was shaking slightly, holding back his laughter.

Mission accomplished, thought Koza. 

___________________________________________________________________________

Haven was much more remote than Koza had expected. She had known theoretically where it was, but she had never been there before. The long, winding roads leading up to it weren’t in the best condition either. It would make getting supplies a bit more of a hassle. However, she could tell that the soil looked good and healthy and that the people looked willing to work. She could deal with that. Even with all of the snow.

The party was greeted at the gate by both Commander Cullen and Sister Nightingale. Koza moved so that she was partially hidden behind Adaar. No sense in drawing unnecessary attention to herself. She would just get into Haven, find out where they wanted to grow things, and-

“I hear you’ve brought a new recruit for us, Cassandra,” came the lyrical voice of Leliana. “We are eager to meet her.”

Fuck.

Bravery and terror go hand in hand, right?

Koza moved to the front of the party and bowed at her waist. “Farmer Koza, at your service,” She said, her eyes locking with the former Chantry sister. 

The suspicion in Leliana’s stare was biting but expected. 

Cassandra placed her hand on Koza’s shoulder, both holding her in place against the Nightingale’s scrutiny and offering a twisted sort of support. “She has been helpful in securing the Crossroads and organizing the refugees. She has also offered to provide the Inquisition with food and assist with the establishment of gardens here. I was also informed by Corporal Vale that she is familiar with alchemy. Adan may find more use for her.”

“That is good,” said Leliana. “Come with me to the Chantry. We can work out your terms of employment there,” she instructed Koza. 

As Koza followed Leliana through Haven, she couldn’t help but look around in fascination. The video games she had played a life-time ago and a world away were nothing more than a hazy recollection, held together by the notes she had written down during her first year Thedas. It had been many years since then. But occasionally she would see or hear something that tugged at the recesses of her memory. Haven was familiar in a very unfamiliar sort of way. 

It was a hopeful sort of place, despite the giant green hole in the sky; it was a growing force united by a noble cause. There were people everywhere of all races and ages, working together, building a community. It was a sobering thought to realize how quickly the settlement would be destroyed. The sharp mountain peaks caped with heavy layers of snow stood sentinel, ready to bury the land.

Leliana led Koza into the Chantry and then into a side room, closing the door securely behind them. 

“I’ve heard much about you,” Leliana drawled, her face giving nothing away.

Koza chuckled nervously. “All good, I hope,” she said. 

“Perhaps,” Leliana replied, running her fingers gently along the small table in the middle of the dimly-lit room. The tips of her gloved fingers didn’t disturb the dust below them.

Koza focused on the dust motes she could see dancing in the little light filtering in from the lone slit window. “You’re a bit intimidating, do you know that,” she accused.

Leliana’s laugh was high and bright, like a bird song. 

“I am glad you decided to join. Mahariel spoke highly of you. Though he did say that you did not speak much common.” There was censure in Leliana’s voice.

“A girl can learn a lot in a few years,” Koza replied. As far as she knew, Mahariel had practically fallen off the map a few years back. She doubted that Leliana had spoken with him any time recently. 

“Hmm, yes. Like how to move freed slaves and mages across countries with almost no one noticing.” There was a devious light in the Nightingale’s eyes. 

Koza tried to seem unfazed and unaffected. “That sounds like it would be a useful thing to learn.”

“Someone who could do that must have some contacts. Contacts that could be useful to a growing organization.”

The room was silent. The Nightingale didn’t need threats or overt demands to make her meaning clear.

“I could put out a call,” Koza acquiesced, “but it would be up to them to respond. I can’t give any names, and I think you understand why.”

Many of Koza’s contacts were known to her only by code names anyways, and she liked it like that. Her system spanned from Antiva to Orlais, and she liked to think that it was robust enough to continue even if some members became compromised, even if she was compromised. Many of them, however, would be very interested in the Inquisition, and if she played her cards right, this partnership could be of mutual benefit.

___________________________________________________________________________

After her talk with the spymaster, Koza was at a loss for what to do or where to go. She knew that Leliana would want her in Haven at least until her contacts came through, but beyond that, she didn’t know her purpose in the growing community. But that meant that, until someone told her otherwise, she could make her own purpose. It was like the story of the ant and the grasshopper, and she had always been much more of an ant. 

She remembered what Cassandra had said at the gate and went to seek out Adan.

Adan, unlike Leliana, was very straightforward and blunt. To be frank, he was a grouch bastard and Koza was immediately charmed by him. It was like chatting with her paternal uncles again. 

“So, you’re saying that by growing the elfroot closer to purple clover it’ll increase the potency of the elfroot?” Adan didn’t look very convinced, which Koza hardly understood. Adan made potions in a world where magic existed. Why did he have trouble believing in the importance of soil composition and co-planting?

“Exactly! Plants communicate with each other. One can say ‘I need more food’ and the other plant with extra can send it to them. Elfroot likes to eat a lot, and clover provides food for it while the presence of elfroot keeps certain types of wildlife from eating the clover. It’s a symbiotic relationship,” She explained. “It’s like any crop; somethings grow better or worse depending on what they’re planted near. You ever try to eat a cucumber grown too close to sage?” Koza made a face at the very thought. She had made that mistake once but she could still taste the bitterness on her tongue. 

Adan looked contemplative, and then frustrated. “We haven’t got any gardens growing around here. The snow’s too thick and I’ve got no time anyways. I’m being run around as a damn healer, which I’m not, and my workers are stuck gathering weeds from the mountains because we have none here and Seggrit is determined to rip everyone off, the damn bastard.”

Koza leaned against the wall and smiled charmingly at the irate alchemist. “How lucky of you to have a farmer on hand then,” She said, gesturing to herself in a grand arm movement. “I have a wagon of supplies being delivered in a few days or so, and there should be plenty of those ‘weeds’ in with the food. If you know of some free land, I’ll even get you a garden going.”

“Well what do you want girlie, an award?” Adan grumbled. “At least you’ll be a damn sight more useful than most of the folks we’ve got here. Go bother that Antivan woman if you want to know about land or people.” At this, Adan turned away from Koza and stirred the simmering pot of…something, bubbling and tar-like, along the back wall. 

Koza smiled. He was exactly like one of her uncles. But, she had no time to reminisce. There was work to be done and an Antivan to find. 

___________________________________________________________________________

The Antivan, Josephine, was so very, very pretty and smart too. She seemed to be handling three conversations at once, placating a noble, getting recruit numbers from one of Leliana’s, and listening to Koza’s requests all with ease. Koza would have been happy to settle in and just watch Josephine in her element, but the Antivan was also very, very busy. Even so, she had found time to set up a trade contract with Koza and direct her to a small plot of land, about half an acre, just outside the walls of Haven. She had also apologized profusely about having no workers to spare to help Koza with the garden, and sent Koza on her way to talk with the commander of the Inquisitions fighting forces, who, for some unknown reason, also wanted to speak her.

She found the commander out by the frozen-over lake, watching some greenhorns run through what looked like a blocking drill. Several of them had sticks instead of swords. Was the Inquisition really so short on supplies? She began to think of who she knew who would be able to send in a shipment or two of weapons, armor, or iron at the very least. 

Commander Cullen stood very formally in his armor and fur, a commanding presence to be sure. Koza secretly thought that he also looked a bit too pompous, for all that she remembered having a crush on the fictional version of him. He seemed like the type to take himself too seriously, but Koza was sure that he could be taught to loosen up, given time and help. Even without the issue of lyrium, he had to be under a fierce amount of pressure. She wondered how many soldiers and friends he had lost in the explosion, but quickly turned those thoughts away.

“Commander Cullen,” she spoke, startling the commanding into turning suddenly towards her with his hand going to the sword at his hip. “Josephine said you wanted to see me?”

To his credit, the commander composed himself quickly. He looked Koza up and down with an assessing eye, and seemed disappointed with what he saw.

Koza couldn’t blame him for that if he was looking for a soldier in her. She was short and slight and she knew it. For all that she was used to physical labor, she still looked delicate to those who hadn’t seen her in a fight or hauling barrels of grain. But she was here as a civilian, a laborer, and there was no shame in that. She could hold her own in a fight, but she was not raised nor trained with a martial lifestyle in mind. 

Finally, the commander seemed finished with his silent examination. His voice held doubt as he said, “Corporal Vale said that you taught the refugees how to fight. How? They don’t seem to know which end of the sword to grab.”

Koza did her best to not let her annoyance show at his obvious disdain and dismissal. Either he was judging her due to her size, her occupation, or her gender, and none of those reasons were acceptable. 

“Didn’t really teach them much. Just gave them something they were familiar with and set up the rotations,” she acknowledged. “You grew up in Honnleath, right?”

Cullen looked surprised and then suspicious. Koza noticed that his hand had moved to his sword again.

“Your complexion gives it away,” she tried to assuage him, and it was true. Those from Honnleath tended to be paler and blonder than the majority of Fereldan. “That and I regularly trade with that village. I’m pretty sure Mia told me that you were likely dead again. You should let her know that you’re not.”

“Enough,” demanded Cullen, his eyes dark. His hand was still on the pommel of his sword. “What does Honnleath have to do with anything?”

Koza saw more than the commander knew he was showing. His hand had a slight tremor, his eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, and he obviously was suffering from some paranoia. Even without her preternatural knowledge of him, Koza could recognize the signs of lyrium withdrawal. She had seen the same signs in Toph once, and had seen it in several former Templars since. Silently, she vowed to ease Cullen’s way through his suffering, but she would have to find a way through his paranoia first. It wouldn’t do to reach out to him and get her head chopped off.

Koza refocused on the conversation at hand and gave Cullen a look that told him she thought he was missing the obvious. 

“They’re a bunch of farmers and hog raisers down there, right? Not really the soldiering type. Closest thing they get to battle is fighting their siblings with sticks, playing Darkspawn and Warden,” she began. “Bet you didn’t learn that sort of thing until you joined the order and even then, you got several years of training. Most of these people haven’t had that. In their minds, they’re still farmers and hog raisers. You’ve got to give them something they’re familiar with. Do you know what the first weapon I picked up during the blight was?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess,” Cullen drawled, both annoyed and slightly amused at the woman challenging him. She was beginning to remind him of Mia. He bet that the two of them got along famously.

“I picked up a pitchfork,” replied Koza. “I grabbed the closest tool at hand and it worked, largely because it was something that I knew how to handle.”

It had been rather ridiculous, looking back. She had chased after hurlocks and genlocks with nothing but foul language, a rusted pitchfork, and a death wish. Yet she had survived and saved some lives in the process, including her own.

“You want me to arm my men with pitchforks?” Cullen looked and sounded incredulous.

“Of course not. But you could use more polearms. I’m a bit biased,” Koza said, patting the guisarme, her faithful companion, strapped to her back, “but folks used to farm tools tend to pick them up a bit better than swords and daggers.” She certainly had. The last time she had tried to use a sword in battle, she had nearly gotten her arm loped off. 

Her explanation made Cullen stop to think for a moment. “And you can train them in this?” Cullen asked her. 

Koza laughed, short and loud, taken by surprise at his question. “I’m not a soldier nor am I a warrior. I can tell someone when their stance looks wrong, but can’t for the life of me tell them why and I have no mind for battle strategies. I’d be more apt to get someone killed. I know the basics but not how to teach them. I can teach soil care, plant rotation, and animal husbandry. I’m willing to drill with them and I’ll do demonstrations all day long, but I’ll leave the training and tactics to people like you who actually know what they’re doing.”

That was how Koza found herself at the training grounds each day just after sunrise, showing the commoner fighting recruits how to use pikes and spears under the keen eye of a tough-looking old soldier named Grishka. 

Koza swore that Grishka must have been a winged Hussar in a former life. The woman wore heavy plate armor as though she was born into it. She moved swifter and more fluidly than the recruits who had more freedom in their light and loose-fitting clothes. And the way she handled a pike, well, Koza had developed a small amount of hero worship. 

Grishka used Koza for most of her demonstrations and as a second-in-command for keeping an eye on the recruits. The number of times that Grishka landed Koza on her ass during their demos and mock fights was downright humbling. Koza had been training with her polearm for the better part of a decade, but Grishka showed her that she still had plenty to learn.

She was unyielding and rough with both the recruits and Koza, but it was a meanness born of determination for them to succeed, and Koza responded to it well. 

Sometimes it felt as though she and Grishka were playing good-cop and bad-cop with the inexperienced recruits, and Koza swore that Grishka had winked at her more than once as she hoisted up and gave advice to someone Grishka had just flattened. 

Honestly, Koza was grateful for the chance to maintain and improve her fighting skills, as they all were going to need them to survive in the days to come.

___________________________________________________________________________

The first of Koza’s wagons, arriving just a few days after she did, brought celebration to Haven. Lorn had packed it well with both short and long-lasting goods, seeds, and plenty of medicinal plants that could make their way to Adan. Tucked into the back, there were also materials that Koza had requested so that she could have her garden in the snow. Finally, hidden bellow a false board, Koza found her journals. 

There were three of them in all, leather-bound, well worn, and all written in the soft-slopped script of Polish. They were her lifeline. In them were her memories of home, sketches of her family’s faces, old recipies, songs, and fragmented poems. In those journals were also her recollections of the world of Thedas that she experienced through the games and books. She hadn’t even thought to start writing down her knowledge of what was to come and what had passed until nearly a year after she had arrived. But, diligently, she had written down everything that she knew, adding bits and pieces as she recalled them over time until there was nothing more that she could add. She knew there were things that she had forgotten, possibly important or pivotal events, but she had done her best. 

They would help her serve her friends well.

And, though Josephine, Cullen, and Threnn had all denied having people to spare to help with the growing, Koza had found a workforce of her own. A wellspring of untapped potential that would be reliable make light work with many hands.

Koza looked at the messy group of kids in front of her and grinned a wicked grin.

She had minions and work to be done. 

There were a little over a dozen of them in all, a mix of races and ranging in age from toddlers to young teens. It was still jarring to Koza to see young children with serious faces and even younger children balanced on their hips, but it was the reality of the world and the land she was in. Everywhere she had traveled in Thedas, there had been plenty of orphans and working children of lower class parents. At least here, she could make sure that they would receive food and an education in return for their work. 

She divided them into three groups and began an assembly line of hoop houses made from bendable green wood and soft nug leather. She didn’t have the materials to build greenhouses. Thedas was sadly lacking in the durable agricultural plastics that she could so sorely use or even affordable glass. However, she had come up with a solution years ago while watching a traveling merchant show runestone wares. 

While she couldn’t afford glass or make plastic, she could carve stones and very small amounts of lyrium. Through working with the tranquil and a couple of mishaps with lyrium, she had found that she could make her own runestones and coax willing spirits through the Fade to power them. With that, she could have sunlight and warmth within the palm of her hand. It wasn’t the perfect solution; the soil would still be frozen and hard below the runestone’s reach. The plants that would grow in those conditions would be weaker and less plentiful, but it would do in a pinch. 

While the work went on, she entertained the children with call and response songs and stories that she had translated from her childhood. The brutal and bloody Slavic folktales went over particularly well in Fereldan. The children especially delighted in any stories Jerzy Jánošík, the dashing rogue who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, though few of them could properly pronounce his name to ask for more tales of his bravery and wit. 

After a few hours of work, she called for the children to stop and served them a meal of vegetable stew and some rough, browned bread, a heartier meal than some of them had ever seen in their lives. As a specially treat, she gave them each a couple of slices of apple.

Their laughter and singing had drawn the attention of more than a few of Haven’s residents, and, with her larger audience in mind, Koza invited the children and anyone listening in to stay for a short lesson on letters and math. 

It didn’t take long to become well known around Haven that, shortly after the noon bell, the strange farmer would teach anyone willing the basics of how to read, write, and add. 

By the end of two weeks, Koza could proudly say that her rag-tag group of kids had turned the half-acre that she had been given into eight prepared hoop-houses, six devoted to produce and two devoted to medicinal plants, and Koza had found a second-in-command of her own in a young elf girl named Amira. 

The girl couldn’t have been more than thirteen, but she already had more sense than many of the adults Koza had met, and she had a knack for leadership among the children. One boy had tried to pitch a tantrum about a “knife-ear” telling him what to do, but Koza had set him straight without delay, surprising both the boy and Amira with the strength of her reprimand. The children and the adults of Haven learned quickly that Koza wouldn’t abide by slurs or xenophobia of any kind. 

Koza’s proudest accomplishment, though, was that each of the kids learned how to at least write and read their own name. 

Even if some of the letters ended up backwards half of the time.

___________________________________________________________________________

Koza was teaching her small army of workers how to identify weeds when she saw their eyes widen comically as a large shadow fell over her. A couple of the children bowed, telling Koza all she needed to know about who was behind her, though the sound of large feet awkwardly shuffling was a good give-away. 

She turned with a smile to greet Adaar. 

She hadn’t had a chance to see him since she had parted with him at the gates of Haven. She had busied herself with work and she knew that he had been sent out several times along with Cassandra, Varric, and Solas to close a rift here and there and spread word of the Inquisition.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your class,” he murmured, his eyes apologetic, “but I had a favor to ask of you.”

“It’s no bother at all. If you have time, I’ll send these’uns off to lunch and we can talk,” Koza replied, curiosity building in her belly. 

Adaar nodded his consent, and the kids were sent off in short order. Amira lingering behind for a moment, as if to make sure that Koza wasn’t in danger from Adaar. Koza waved her off.

When Adaar looked reluctant to speak, Koza invited him to sit next to her. She would give him time to gather his thoughts. The sky was clear and the sun was warm even on the snow. She could happily bask for quite some time in silence. 

“You’ve been busy,” he said after a while. He spoke quietly and there was a gentleness in his voice that Koza hoped he wouldn’t lose during the stresses of what was to come. He would not have any easy way of it if the stories she had seen were accurate. 

They sat in silence for a moment, Koza waiting for him to say more. 

“I don’t want to give you more work, but I think you could help in this,” he said.

Koza bumped shoulders with him and smiled. “I like to keep my hands and mind busy. If I’ve got too much work, I have no problem being loud and complaining about it. Go ahead; tell me what you need.”

The look of relief on Adaar’s face was sweet but it stirred some sadness in Koza. He really was young.

“Cassandra says that the Inquisition needs horses. Scout Harding says that there’s a horse master clear on the other side of the Hinterlands who could help, but no one’s heard from him in a while. Leliana said that you might know the horse master and the safest way to reach him,” Adaar explained.

Koza raised an eyebrow and waited for him to go on. When more than a minute passed, she prompted, “and you wanted to ask me to…”

“Go with me- us to recruit the horse master. Please.”

“Of course I will,” acquiesced Koza with an easy grin. “You ask and I’ll do if I can. You don’t need to be so worried with me. I promise I’m not that scary.”

Adaar fidgeted with his fingers and hummed an acknowledgment.

Koza placed her small hand over his giant ones, stilling his movement and stopping him from picking at hangnails and making his hands bleed. 

“Really,” she said. “I am nothing to fear. I’m here to help. If I think somethings wrong, I’ll speak up, but otherwise, I like to be useful and busy. And,” she said slowly, her voice getting softer, “if you need someone to talk to, I can be here for that too. You look like you still haven’t been getting much rest. If not me, I’m sure Solas or Varric would be willing to help. Maker knows they both like sound of their own voices, but they also seem like they’d be good listeners.”

“You’d be willing to listen?”

Koza, sitting as close as she was, still barely heard Adaar’s words, quiet as they were.

“Yeah,” she said, gently squeezing his hand, just like she had before they got to Haven. “If you have things that need saying, I’ll be here to listen.”

___________________________________________________________________________

Adaar took Koza up on her offer two nights into their trip to Dennet’s. She had first watch and, after the others had retired to their tents for the night, he joined her by the fire.

“Do you believe it,” he asked, staring into the fire as if it held the secrets to the world.

Koza looked at him, confused. “Believe what?”

He shook his head and then bowed it, staring now at the ground. “That I’m the Herald of Andraste, sent by the Maker to fix this.”

Koza snorted inelegantly, and then quickly moved to cover her face with her hand. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “I guess that kind of answers your question though. No, I don’t believe that you’re Maker sent to solve all of our problems. Seems more likely to me that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got the short end of it. But what I believe doesn’t really matter in this. Do you believe that you’re Maker sent?”

Adaar looked over at her nervously, his eyes flicking back and forth across her face, trying to read her reaction to what he was about to say.

“I-I don’t know if I even believe in the Maker. And I certainly don’t feel divinely guided. I just feel lost. I…I,” Adaar seemed to lose his voice and he bowed his head again, staring intently at the ground. “Everything I knew is gone. Everyone I knew is lost or dead. What am I supposed to do with that?” Adaar’s voice cracked and he stopped speaking, closing in on himself.

Koza moved to kneel in the dirt in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders, smoothing his shirt gently. 

“It’s okay to grieve,” she murmured, telling Adaar the words she wished someone had said to her so many years ago, when she had arrived in Thedas, lost, alone and traumatized, or when she had first seen people torn to death by darkspawn, or the first time she had killed another person and watched as the life left their eyes. There were many times when she could have used kind words. “It’s okay to cry and to not be okay for a while. You’ve felt loss and hurt, and those things take time.” He reminded her so much of one of the kids that she thought nothing of moving forwards and placing a soft kiss between his horns. It was a symbol of kindness and kin.

He fell forwards on her, clutching around her shoulders in a strong hug and hiding his tears and ugly, muffled sobs into her neck. 

Koza didn’t fool herself into thinking that it was anything special about her that had Adaar in this state. He had been near the breaking point for a while now, and she had been the first to offer soft words instead of orders. Acceptance of grief instead of jokes.

They sat there in the dirt, Koza gently rubbing Adaar’s back and humming soothingly, until she felt the arms around her back loosen and the tears on her neck begin dry. 

Then she heard a soft snore. She tried to hold back her chuckle. 

Adaar had cried himself to sleep.

How unfair it was that such heavy burdens fell to him, Koza thought. Adaar was not the rough and ready to lead Inquisitor, thrust into power, but confident in their skills. He was a young man who was scared, and lost, and wanted someone to tell him what to do. Perhaps in time, he would grow into his position. Koza could tell that he was a good lad who wouldn’t treat anyone unkindly, but an Inquisitor who was easily influenced, too gentle, and indecisive would be a dangerous Inquisitor indeed. But that was a problem for tomorrow. Adaar would have time to find himself and grow, but he was like a soft sapling planted on a windy slope. He needed support to survive and thrive. He needed someone he could call friend and come too when the world became too much. Koza wouldn’t mind being that friend. She had already began to think of him as one of her flock.

She carefully extricated herself from Adaar and went to her tent, fetching her bedroll and blanket. Adaar clearly hadn’t been sleeping well, so it made no sense to wake him once he was finally asleep, but there was no way she could carry him to his tent. He had to weigh at least two to three times what she did. Instead, she gently guided him to the ground with her bedroll below his head and her blanket over him as she settled in to take his watch as well. 

Hours later, she woke Varric for the third watch, but motioned for him to not wake Adaar as she went to her tent to sleep on the ground, her coat placed over her for warmth and her pack serving as a pillow. 

___________________________________________________________________________

Several miles away from the sleepy campsite, a lone rider rode hard across the Hinterlands, making his way to a place that he liked to think of as home.

Of course, the people living there didn’t know that he thought of it as home, but that was how he liked it. If they knew he thought of it as home, then it might have to mean something and there might have to be a conversation about…feelings.

Eventually, a farmstead came into view, with its colorful flowers growing in the garden and painted up the sides of the walls. The Grey Warden grinned in the darkness. More flowers had been painted since his last visit.

It would be good to have a warm place to rest and, despite the late hour, he knew he would get a warm greeting from the owner.

Alistair dismounted his horse and led it around to the stables, quickly finding an empty stall and making sure that his mount was set for the night before he went to the door. But as he moved to leave the stables, he saw movement in the trees at the edge of the property. There was someone out there, in armor, clearly walking a patrol.

He pulled on his cloak and blended in with the shadows of the night. Never let it be said that he learned nothing from formerly traveling with three rouges. 

The patrolling soldier moved out of range and Alistair crept up to the back door, opening it swiftly with the key that he kept on a chain around his neck. 

But his stealth was for naught when two large, grey hands reached to pull him through the door he just opened and into the house. He may have screamed, just a little. But it was a manly scream, alright?

The big, scary Qunari mage and the smaller but no less scary ‘I-can-kill-you-with-a-spoon’ elf both glared down at the startled Grey Warden.

“Shut up,” hissed Lorn. “Do you want to alert the Inquisition that you’re here?”

Alistair was confused, and he had never done well with confusion. “The Inquisition? Didn’t that end by the second blight? Oh no, did I travel through time?”

“We’ll have someone else go, Toph maybe,” drawled Rex, looking at Alistair as if he were a particularly ugly rodent. “Surely this one would only do more harm than good.”

“He’s the first that’s come since they took Koza,” complained Lorn.

Alistair’s expression hardened and his playful façade dropped immediately. “Who took Koza.” 

It wasn’t a question, it was a command.

“Why, the Inquisition,” claimed Rex with affected boredom that was belied by tense anger in his frame. “A few weeks ago. She let them into her home. Fed them, gave them rest, and they threatened her. I heard it myself. One of them told her that unless she went with them, we would be targeted. I maintain that we could have killed them then. Ephiran agreed with me, but Koza called us off. They must be holding something big over her.”

“Where,” said Alistair.

“Near where the Temple of Sacred Ashes used to stand. A town called ‘Haven.’”

Alistair was gone again before the sun rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating a week early as a gift to myself for finishing a huge work assignment.
> 
> Thank you so much for all of the kind feedback!
> 
> Update schedule is once every two weeks.
> 
> Feed back is always welcome. Please let me know what you liked and what you want to see. I could always use some more ideas!
> 
> Let me know if there's anything you think that I've forgotten or if anyone seems OOC.
> 
> Also let me know if you see ways that I can improve my writing.
> 
> Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (I could use an editor if someone is willing to lend their skills)


	3. Chapter Three: The road to the house of a friend is never very long.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Koza argues with everyone. Temper, temper...

Ch. 3

Daily Almanac Advice: “The road to the house of a friend is never very long.”

The sight of Dennet’s farm on horizon, untouched by the chaos of the war and the breach, was a welcome sight. Koza clicked and cooed at the herd of druffalo in a pen as they walked past, delighting in seeing the furry menaces trot around as if nothing was wrong in the world. 

As they came to the field, Elaina, Dennet’s wife, greeted Koza warmly in the style of Fereldan farmers. Which is to say, she gave a terse, welcoming nod without a smile. Only fools smiled for no reason, or so the saying went. They clasped arms briefly, both relieved that the other hadn’t died in the war that was raging across Fereldan or in the devastation caused by the breach and the rifts.

“Dennet may be the one we came to talk to, but Elaina’s really the one in charge. I worked for them, for a short time, during the Blight,” Koza told Adaar as he stood back warily, too skittish to approach on his own. “They’re good people. I took refuge in the stables at Redcliffe and Dennet put me to work. He sent me off to Denerim to work with Elaina when the undead started coming from the Castle. He thought it would be safer there.”

“You were in Denerim during the Blight?” Adaar asked, his head cocked as he looked around the farm. “But wasn’t that where the arch demon attacked?” 

“Aye,” answered Elaina, leaning on her hoe. She watched the qunari suspiciously. “Damn bastard did. The Wardens thought it would go for Redcliffe. Nasty surprise when it didn’t.”

“How did you survive?” Adaar’s eyes were wide and worried, darting back and forth between Elaina and Koza.

“Near didn’t,” said Elaina. “Seanna and I sheltered in the cellar along with the neighbors. This twit here,” she said, gesturing to Koza with her elbow, “ran into the thick of it with a pitchfork and disappeared. We thought she was dead until she turned up again a few months later.”

Adaar’s mouth was open as he stared at Koza who was rubbing the side of her face in embarrassment.

Varric looked like Feastday had come early. “A pitchfork, you say…”

Koza coughed loudly. “Not that catching up isn’t fun and all,” she said awkwardly, “we really need to speak with Dennet. We could use some horses, and he’s the best around.”

“My man’s up at the house,” replied Elaina, “but we can’t spare any horses or people until the wolves are taken care of. They’ve been acting odd and getting bolder, acting like the ones with the water sickness. It won’t be long until they set their sights on larger animals. People too.”

Wolves were dangerous, sick ones even more so. Koza couldn’t blame Dennet and Elaina for being hesitant. If it really was the water sickness, rabies as Koza knew it, it would be bad. Just like back home, there was no cure for those infected with rabies. Those fighting the wolves would have to worry about bites and blood, not just mortal injuries. But Solas had said something earlier about them being driven made by the breach, or something about a demon. Was it possible? She didn’t remember anything about possessed wolves, but she had forgotten many details over the years.

“We can take care of the wolves,” Koza said firmly. Even if Adaar or Cassandra refused to join her, she would take care of the wolves herself. It was the least she could do to repay Dennet and his family for their kindness over the years. “Is there anything else?”

Elaina looked towards the house thoughtfully. “You’re with the Inquisition now? You’ve got the man power then. Bron wants to build some watchtowers. The lad thinks it might save some lives out here.”

Grinning, Koza nodded, already thinking about the best areas to put them. Watchtowers would be promising, and Bron was a resourceful lad who had always been willing to lend a hand during fights with bandits and thieves in the past. Koza made a mental note to ask him if he knew where she could source some swords and spears from, maybe some armor too. It was shameful to have Inquisition soldiers fighting with wooden weapons due to shortages.

Koza looked to Adaar, waiting to see if he would take charge and talk with Elaina or Bron. He looked at her curiously, patiently waiting and content to sit back and let her lead. He would not step in unless she told him to.

Koza sighed internally. She wasn’t the one who was supposed to be making these negotiations. “Then we’ll talk to him too. Cullen and Leliana’s people could benefit from watchtowers and it’ll help secure mounts for your Inquisition, right Cassandra?”

The Seeker had an angry look on her face, one which Koza had begun to recognize as her thinking face. It was only slightly different from Cassandra’s ‘there are too many bears attacking us’ and ‘the Herald of Andraste just wandered off to look at the flowers again’ face, though Koza swore she had seen a slight smile after Adaar had offered on of the flowers to the Seeker, commenting on how it matched the red in her armor. 

She firmly believed that Cassandra was a good person, but the Seeker kept her feelings well-hidden except for her irritation and was short tempered with Adaar, making Koza short tempered with her. It wasn’t a great cycle. Koza hoped it was one that would change with time as they all got to know one another better. 

“We hardly have time or the people, but we can send a letter to Cullen to get them built,” Cassandra huffed. She was constantly aggravated by their slow progress and Koza could sympathize. With the Inquisition, even a minor task seemed to have three other jobs chained to it. Something that should take five minutes took three days and usually involved killing something by the time they were done with it. 

Koza accepted Cassandra’s compromise and started to mentally composing a missive for the Commander as she went off to seek Bron, Seanna and Dennet. It had been far too long since they had last met, and if she remembered correctly, Seanna still owed her two sovereigns for winning their last race.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

They camped outside the farm house that night, trading stories around the fire. They were more relaxed than usual, more comfortable in the relative safety of the farm. 

As another tale drew to a close, Varric asked the question Koza had been waiting for since she had joined their company. It never took long for people to ask.He had just finished telling Adaar a story about Hawke crashing a wedding when he brought it up. 

“So Honeybee,” he began, turning his attention to Koza nonchalantly, “your accent is a bit odd. Where’d you say you were from?”

The nickname startled Koza. Years ago and a world away, her dad used to refer to her as his ‘pszczółka’ – his little bee. It tugged at an old pain to hear herself being called by a similar nickname again.

“Can’t say,” she said with affected disinterest as she threw a stick into the fire. “Very far away, I think. I haven’t met anyone who recognizes my mother language in ages.” It was a story she had told many times over the years.

Out of the corner of her eye, Koza saw Solas turn his head slightly, focusing in on their conversation. The elf had been mostly keeping to himself, vaguely listening to the tales of the night, but it seemed that they had his attention now. She hoped that wouldn’t prove to be a problem. 

“That’s…different,” hedged Varric, leaning forward in curiosity. “There has to be a story to that.”

Koza grinned tightly at the storyteller. It was a story that no one would believe. She still had trouble believing it and she had lived through it. “Not much of one,” she lied.

Varric pressed on, needling her. “Come on, even a short story is good for an evening’s entertainment. Indulge me.”

“Fine,” she clipped, sitting up straighter, her spine rigid. “Many years ago, shortly before the last blight started, I woke up in a cave, imprisoned by a blood mage with no memory of how I got there. I think he tried to summon a demon to kill the templars pursuing him, but he fucked up and got me instead. I escaped and I ran. I couldn’t understand anyone and nothing around me was familiar. Eventually, I found my way to Lothering, and that was that. In over ten years, I still haven’t found a way home.”

She had looked, too, consulting many people and books about other words. She had found nothing of use. Eventually, she had given up, consigning herself to making a new home but always missing everything she had once found familiar.

Solas looked intrigued. “You say he summoned you instead of a spirit?”

Damn. Red alert. She was supposed to stay away from the ancient elf who could turn her into stone.

She nodded in reply, not meeting his eyes.

“Shit, kid, that’s rough. You really don’t know how to get back?” Varric looked like he was itching to grab a quill and start writing. Koza didn’t want her past to end up as fodder for one of his books. It would be too much.

“For all I know,” she said, “It’s beyond the other side of the waking sea. I certainly had never heard of Fereldan before I ended up here.”

“You must be really far from home then. And to end up in Fereldan right before the blight too,” he said, letting out an impressed whistle, “that had to be something.”

“Nothing good,” Koza joked stiffly.

“Who were you,” Cassandra asked, “where you came from?” 

She and Koza hadn’t talked much. Cassandra had been too busy keeping an eye on the Herald, but she saw a chance in this questioning. Maybe this would help solve the incongruities that she saw in Koza’s behavior. The woman was too educated and too commanding to have come from a poor household. She held herself like a trained leader or a noble for all she claimed to be a nobody. 

“I wasn’t anyone, really,” Koza said. “I was the third daughter and fourth child of my father. We had a small herd of goats and a good plot of land. I was the only kid interested in the land, so Da was raising me to take over the farm eventually.” Koza had long wondered what her Da had done once she was gone.

“You weren’t from a noble line or in the service of the Chantry?” Cassandra’s eyes were sharp as she watched.

“What? Ha, no,” Koza scoffed. “My family was as common as dirt. We could trace our lineage as goatherds back centuries with not a drop of noble blood. I grew up knee deep in shit and was working since I was old enough to stand. I’m not some fine Lady or anything. As for the chantry,” she paused, thinking of the towering churches of her childhood and the rows of black-robed nuns. “My grandmother wanted me to become a sister. Not because we were particularly devout, mind you, but more because she was worried about me ruining the family name. I spent most of my time unchaperoned with shirtless male farmhands. Positively scandalous, I know. But no, despite grandmother’s complaints, I never joined the chantry.” 

“You are educated,” Cassandra protested, a knot forming between her eyebrows. “That is unusual for a simple country family,” she pressed.

“It’s normal where I’m from,” claimed Koza, remembering the schoolhouse and, vaguely, her old friends and teachers. Their faces and names were indistinct after the years, but some details still stood out. For a moment, she could almost hear the chants that they would say while jumping rope before class. She could almost smell the dusty chalk from the erasers she would clap together after hours. The memories weren’t ones that she had thought about in a very long time. “All children are taught. It’s mandatory, and most people attend school for at least twelve years. I even attended a few years of university to study agriculture.” Her voice grew wistful near the end. The memories still stung with the knowledge that she would likely never be able to go back. 

Cassandra looked shocked. “That is normal?”

Koza hummed in agreement. “A land prospers when it’s people prosper,” she said. “A good education is a way to make sure that your people prosper.”

“And so you set up a school in Haven,” Solas added.

Despite her annoyance at the maintained questioning, Koza was surprised. She hadn’t thought Solas would notice. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to her or the other people in Haven. The only one he seemed to notice was Adaar, and even then, she didn’t think he was seeing Adaar so much as the mark.

“Not much of a school yet,” she remarked. “Just a few classes here and there. I’d like to make it more, if I get a chance.”

“You said Koza was a family name,” Cassandra interrupted, her mind still puzzling over Koza’s behavior and alleged past. “It is rare for peasants to have family names.”

“Wait,” said Adaar, placing his hand around Koza’s shoulder and drawing her attention to him. He had been sitting quietly for most of the evening, content to let the stories flow around him. “If Koza is your family name, what is your personal name?”

“Everyone had family names,” claimed Koza. “Even the lowly farmers.”

“But Koza, what did your parents call you? Your friends?” Adaar asked again, looking at her eagerly. It seemed like it really mattered to him, but this wasn’t something she felt comfortable giving. She hadn’t said that name aloud in years and thinking about it was upsetting.

“I’d rather not.” Koza’s cheeks were starting to turn red. Between the sting of the memories and the persistence of the questions, she was losing her hold on her temper. 

“Common Honeybee,” Varric urged. “I’m sure it can’t be that bad. The Seeker over here has about fifteen names, and each of them frillier than the last. So tell us, what’s your name?”

That was it.

“Enough,” Koza barked, shaking off Adaars hand and standing up abruptly. “I don’t like to think about that name any more. I am Koza. Ko-za. That is my name. The girl who went by another name is dead. She is the girl still with her family in the highlands and I am the one who is here. I’m going to bed.”

Her fists were clenched tight enough to bleach her knuckles white. Her normal smile had twisted into a grimace.

The group was silent for a while after Koza had retired to her tent until Varric said what he was sure they were all thinking. 

“Well, shit.”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

The scout watching the road into Haven wasted no time in sending a runner and a raven to alert the spy master that a man in Grey Warden armor was approaching. 

Within moments, Leliana was at the gate waiting, a spark of hope in the pit of her stomach. Even though he hadn’t replied to her letters and she hadn’t heard from him in over a year, it could be that Mahariel was here, coming to help. He would know what to do and how to move forward, how to find the one responsible for the death of Justinia. But the figure on the horse was much too large, blond, and human to be Mahariel. 

Maker take him. Leliana scowled.

The spark of hope went out quickly and Leliana didn’t bother to disguise the disappointment in her voice when she recognized the Warden. “Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

Alistair greeted her with a terse nod. “And it’s you. I should have known I’d find you in the creepy cultist town involved with kidnappings and religious fanaticism. Murder anyone recently?”

He dismounted his horse and held the reigns tightly in his hand, eyeing Leliana mistrustfully. 

“What are you doing here?” Leliana allowed the bitterness to seep into her voice. She knew Alistair’s views on who she had become and some of the things she had done. Their last encounter had been unpleasant at best.

“Oh, you know, the usual. Killing darkspawn, ridding the world of evil, and rescuing friends from shady organizations.”

She didn’t miss the venom and pointedness with which Alistair had said the last part. “And who is it that you believe you are rescuing?”

Alistair’s expression was hard and angry, accusing. “Kidnap and threaten that many people recently? Hard to keep track of all of them after the first dozen I suppose.”

Cullen approached swiftly upon seeing Leliana facing down and arguing with a man in full armor with a warhorse at the gate. He kept his hand on his sword, ready to draw if need be. Though the man looked familiar, Cullen was apprehensive. It took a lot to shake up Leliana.

Cullen quickly recognized Alistair, familiar with the Warden from their days together as Templar initiates and then from their brief meetings at Kinloch and Kirkwall. It was no wonder why Leliana was disturbed. Alistair had always had a particular talent for annoying even the most patient chantry brothers and sisters, and lately, Leliana’s patience had been thin.

“Kidnapping? What is he on about,” Cullen asked, overhearing only the last part of the conversation.

“Should have known you’d be here too,” said Alistiar flippantly, not even bothering to greet Cullen. “Making sure the mages are all locked up still? Have you moved on to non-mages too? Might as well just lock everyone up then.”

Cullen’s posture went rigid. His jaw was tight.

Alistair wondered if he could goad the man into a fistfight, like he once had when they were children. He felt like he needed a fight – there was too much talking and not enough acting. His friend was still missing.

“I will handle this, Commander. We are,” Leliana paused. “We were old friends. I will deal with him.”

Alistair watched Cullen leave and shot Leliana a judging look. “Surely you’re joking. He’s a commander? Don’t you remember what he was like in Kinloch? Do you know what he allowed to happen in Kirkwall?”

Alistair had been in Kirkwall, at least for a short time and he had seen what Meredith Stannard had done to the mages there, what Cullen had been complicit in. No one deserved that kind of torment and abuse. 

“He is a good man,” asserted Leliana, “a man who has made mistakes and is atoning for them. You would do well not to judge him by his past. Now, who is it that you are looking for?”

Alistair scoffed.

“You know, I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” said Alistair. He turned to look at the walls of Haven, still watching Leliana out of the corner of his eye. She was pretending to be friendly now, but he didn’t trust it one bit. “I think I’ll just look around until I find them. I wouldn’t want them to ‘mysteriously disappear’ after all.”

The Grey Wardens had heard about some of the people who Leliana had helped ‘mysteriously disappear’ over the years. It didn’t paint a pretty picture when some of the bodies turned up.

Leliana moved forwards and pressed a pointed finger into Alistair’s chest plate as she spoke. “I will allow you into Haven, but you will not cause any trouble. I will have you removed, Grey Warden or no.”

“Of course, Sister Nightingale,” replied Alistair with his hands held up in mock surrender. “I’ll cause no problems until I find my missing friend. Now where are the murder dungeons?”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

The shrieks of the demon and the pained howls of the wolves still echoed in Adaar’s head as he came down from the adrenaline high from the battle. The rest of the party was off, cleaning themselves and their weapons from the gore of the fight, and Adaar had a moment to himself.

He placed crystal grace flowers on top of the spot where they had burned the bodies of the wolves. The beasts had been possessed, controlled by a demon. Their actions weren’t their fault, and he felt sympathy for them. 

They hadn’t deserved this. 

They hadn’t deserved this. He could see the twisted, burned bodies from the Temple when he closed his eyes. In his dreams, he saw the corpses contort and crawl, pointing at him with accusing fingers, condemning him with harsh words.

The scratches on his hands and arms pulled and stung, an anchor to the world around him. Shokrakar had always accused him of being off in his own mind, when she had been alive to, at least. 

The crunching of boots on the gravel behind him pulled Adaar out of his thoughts. He turned to look and was relieved to see that it was Koza. He didn’t know what he would say if it were Cassandra there to berate him for wasting their time or Varric there to try to make a joke. He’d probably just do something that would annoy them. That seemed to be a common theme. Then Cassandra would huff at him or Varric would make these sad eyes at him and sigh. He never seemed to find the right words to say to them.

Koza added a small bundle of lavender to the crystal grace and put her hand on Adaar’s shoulder. “You should heal up those scratches. We’re going to be heading back to Dennet’s soon.”

She smelled like lavender, both from the flowers and from the soap that she often carried with her. Adaar breathed deeply, allowing the scent to calm him.

“We don’t usually get a chance to take care of the dead,” Adaar replied quietly, trusting Koza to understand. “I always feel bad about just leaving them there. They were someone’s family too.”

Koza knew he wasn’t talking about wolves. This likely wasn’t about all of the bandits, Templars, or mages they had killed either. She patted his shoulder, reminding him that she was there for him. She thought of other ways to help him.

“You should talk to Leliana,” she said, “when we get back to Haven. Find out where the rest of your mercenary group went after the explosion. You should have closure, know who is still alive and who isn’t. Leliana can find them for you.”

Adaar looked up at Koza, uncertain and lost. Guilt twisted his mouth into an ugly shape. “Cassandra said that more than a thousand people died at the Conclave. I-I was there and I can’t even begin to imagine it. A thousand people gone in an instant.” He looked at the sad offering of flowers.

So many people had died, and he still wasn’t sure if it wasn’t, at least in part, his fault. He couldn’t remember what had happened at the Conclave and he had the mark in his hand. What if it was his fault?

And even if it wasn’t, he wasn’t the only one affected by the deaths. He would never forget overhearing a sobbing father try to explain to his child that ‘mommy’ wasn’t coming back from the tower, that the little boy would never see his mom again. All the while, he, the ‘Herald of Andraste’ hid in the back corner of the tavern, shaking from shock and misery, too paralyzed by doubt to do anything but hide. 

He looked back at Koza, wondering if she could see his guilt. “My loss is so small compared to that. Do you really think Sister Leliana would bother? That she would help me find them?”

Koza nodded firmly. “Of course she would,” she reassured him. “If only because she hates not knowing everything.”

Adaar felt comforted by her confidence, her calm blocking his guilt and doubt. She always seemed so certain of her way, surefooted and upbeat. Haven had felt brighter, since she had arrived. He had felt brighter, lighter, more hopeful since she arrived. He smiled shyly at her, hoping she understood. 

Koza reached down to help Adaar up. “Now come on, we should get moving before Cassandra comes to see what’s taking us so long. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

With the wolves dispatched and an order sent for the towers to be built, the labor being supplemented by some of Koza’s people, the Inquisition party was finally ready to return to Haven with a horse master and mounts to follow a few days behind. 

When all was packed, they left, this time on horseback. Koza bid farewell to Seanna and Brom with a quick hug and kiss for each of them. She never knew when a goodbye might be the last. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Koza was quick to start organizing the stables for Dennet and his mounts immediately upon their return to Haven. The horse master would be along soon with the first of the mounts, and accommodations would have to be made by then. With Cullen’s permission, she redirected several recruits to cleaning out the stalls and setting up a couple of pens, pausing momentarily when she saw a familiar looking horse already in the stable. 

Where had she seen that horse before? She shook the unimportant thought out of her head and continued on.

Cullen oversaw Koza’s work with his arms crossed across his broad chest. Ostensibly, he was there to make sure his soldiers were doing as they were told. Realistically, he needed a break. But watching the short woman call out orders without hesitance was relaxing. While she had been gone, he had found himself absent-mindedly looking for her on the training grounds or by the strange tents she had built for her garden. 

Her absence had been notable. The lack of her stories and songs ringing out across the training field as she led the children along was strange, as was the empty space by the tavern where she usually gathered quite a group for evening lessons. 

The woman had been good for the Inquisition. The gardens were coming along, or so he had been told. It was hard to tell when they were covered by tents. Adan was complaining less as he had much of the supplies that he needed to make potions and tonics, though Cullen still had to deal with his complaints about Seggrit’s behavior daily. Flissa and Threnn had nothing but good things to say about the maintained stream of food; if anyone was going hungry, it wasn’t for lack of provisions. The polearm training was also bearing fruit. Grishka confided in him that she was optimistic about the progression of the former peasants’ battle readiness, though she would never tell them that. 

He wondered what other changes the farmer might bring to Haven now that she was back.

Koza’s voice was loud and clear across the snow as she sent Adaar off to carry a trough and a soldier off to ask for more hay from Threnn. She gave orders with an experienced ease even as she dove into the work herself.

It was the familiar sound her voice that drew out Haven’s latest guest.

Following a list of requests from Dennet, Koza drew out a hasty sketch of what needed to be constructed and handed it off to a runner while she moved to mark out the areas of where the pens would need to be and where another set of stables would have to be constructed. Busy setting things up, Koza didn’t notice Alistair’s presence at her side until he spoke, a sly smile on his face.

“You look oddly in charge for someone I came to rescue,” he accused.

Koza jumped and turned to look at him in bewilderment. “Alistair! You handsome bastard!” She gave him a quick hug, standing on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck in a flurry of motion, missing his sudden blush at the attention. “You’re the one who usually needs rescuing. What are you doing here?”

She hadn’t seen him in months, and certainly hadn’t been expecting to run into him in Haven. If she was being honest with herself, she had hoped that she wouldn’t see him until the breach was closed and the ancient magister was dead.

“Hey, no need to be mean about it. I’ve done plenty of rescuing in my day,” Alistair mock-pouted, the corners of his mouth pulling down comically.

“Oh sorry,” replied Koza, setting down the rocks she was using as a guide for where the temporary lean-to should go. “Let me swoon for you and play the damsel.” She play-acted fainting dramatically into Alistair’s side before whacking his chest plate with the palm of her hand. “Now really, what are you doing here?”

Alistair caught her by the side moved closer and looked her over carefully, his eyes lingering the longest on her face. His smile dropped, leaving a serious expression in its place. “Your friends told me that you had been threatened and taken,” he said in a low voice, not wanting to be overheard. “You can understand why I would be concerned.”

Damn it Rex, she thought.

“I’m fine,” said Koza, backing away with a reassuring smile. “I joined willingly, though I could see how Rex would get the wrong impression from his eavesdropping. But we both know that he’s a suspicious bastard. Really, I’m okay, Alistair. There’s no need for rescue.”

“Good,” said Alistair. “Then we can be on our way. I didn’t see your horse here, but we can both fit on mine.” He grabbed Koza’s wrist to pull her along, but was stopped short as she stayed in place, refusing to move.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, her eyebrows drawn together partially in confusion and partially in irritation. “I’ve joined the Inquisition. They need my help here.”

“It’s dangerous here,” Alistair coaxed. “Have you seen this place? Not only does it have a dark and creepy past but it’s hardly defensible and safe. And have you seen the people? You shouldn’t be in a place like this.” Haven still gave him the heebie-jeebies. Cannibalistic, dragon-worshiping cults were still fairly high on his list of nightmares, despite all that he had seen. 

Koza dug her heels into the snow and broke Alistairs grip around her arm. “No. I’m needed here and I gave them my word. I’m staying.”

Alistair had seen her stubbornness from time to time over the years. When Koza was being hardheaded, nothing short of sheer physical force could budge her.

“Then I’m staying too,” he relented.

“That- are you seriously-No! That’s not safe,” argued Koza, her voice rising in pitch. “Didn’t you get my letter?”

And indeed he had. Weeks before the explosion of the conclave, Alistair had received a letter from her, written in stressed and worried wording, uncharacteristic of the Koza he knew. It had set him on edge. She had written of dark things, warning him that the calling he was hearing, the dark voice of an arch demon in his head was false, caused by one who could call to all tainted things. She gave a prediction that the one causing it would do something to disrupt the mage-templar gathering. She warned him to keep his head down and not do anything rash, especially since the Warden Commander seemed to have her eye on him, and not in a good way.

“The wardens are being targeted and used for something,” she whispered heatedly. “They’ve been disappearing and something is very, very wrong with this calling. It won’t be long before Clarel does something rash. You need to disappear for a while and this is a hard place to do that. Go back to the farm. Tell Toph that you need special passage. He’ll know what that means. We’ll get you out safely.”

Alistair stared at her. She looked determined, as hardheaded as one of her goats, but Alistair could see the fear she was trying to hid. It showed itself in the lines around her eyes and the slight tremble in her hands, in the way that she kept trying to tuck flyaway hair behind her ear. His mind was made up. He wasn’t leaving without her. There was something very wrong going on.

“And you’ll just stay here, in a town that used to house one fanatical religious cult and now houses another, slightly different fanatical religious cult. Forgive me if I’m not okay with that,” he groused.

“Is there a problem over here,” demanded Cullen, breaking into what looked from the outside to be a heated argument. 

The setting up of the stables was going on smoothly around arguing pair, but several people were surreptitiously watching them, eager for gossip or information.

“No, no problem,” replied Alistair, his voice falsely light and airy. “Just asking my friend here where she’s staying so that I know where to leave my stuff.”

Koza discretely stepped on Alistair’s foot. “No he’s not. He’s about to be on his way Commander. Sorry for the disturbance.”

“So which is it,” snapped Cullen. “Is he staying or is he going?”

“Staying,” said Alistair.

“Going,” said Koza.

Decided, Cullen stood at attention and addressed Alistair. “Grey Warden, you have done nothing but eat, drink, and sleep since you arrived and now I find you harassing one of the Inquisition’s people. It is past time for you to leave.”

Koza stared at Alistair, her eyebrows raised. Had he really been such a lay-about? 

“I can help train your troops,” insisted Alistair. 

“No,” Koza growled. 

“I also make a pretty good Fereldan stew,” he quipped.

“No, you don’t,” she responded, “it tastes like boiled shoes.”

“Did I mention that Leliana and I go way back?”

“Last time you mentioned her to me, it was in terms of the ‘scary assassin spy’ who you thought may be trying to kill you.”

“So, Cullen, are you ready to be brothers in arms, just like old times?”

“Maker’s breath,” Cullen sighed, massaging his temples. He didn’t want to deal with this, but the Inquisition was in desperate need of experienced fighters, and he had a feeling that Alistair wouldn’t give up. “I expect you in the field by the second bell. Just…don’t start screaming in the chantry like you used to. Koza, I’ll be counting on you to keep an eye on him.” Maybe the woman could control the Warden.

Alistair grinned at a scowling Koza. “It looks like I’m part of the Inquisition now,” he crowed. “So where are we bunking?”

“So this is your plan,” Koza muttered out of the corner of her mouth as she moved to help with the stables again. Alistair followed, close to her side. “Instead of laying low and finding out what’s going on with the Orlesian wardens, you’re going to join a renegade branch of the Chantry that’s publicly going about closing the giant hole in the sky.”

“I didn’t say it was a good plan,” he replied.

Koza punched him on the shoulder.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Twilight found Koza in one of the hoop houses subjecting herself to what she liked to call ‘work therapy.’ If a person worked long enough and hard enough, they’d get too tired to think or be angry. So far, it wasn’t working.

Leliana slipped into the structure silently, watching Koza for a moment much like a hawk watches a hare. “You were the one that Alistair was looking for?”

Koza continued working, pulling weeds out of the dirt with a single-minded ferocity. “Apparently, yes.”

“And why would a Grey Warden come looking for you?”

There weren’t enough weeds to even Koza’s temper. “Because he’s an idiot. And because my friends are idiots who told him that I’d been strong-armed into joining the Inquisition.” Koza stabbed her trowel into the ground to cut the weed’s roots.

“That does answer part of my question. But why a Grey Warden?” 

“They stop at the farm, from time to time. I let Mahariel know that he could use my place as a safe haven. Eventually, he started sending other wardens my way. People who need some time to recover or a place to lay low for a while. I’m pretty sure every Grey Warden in Fereldan has spent a night at the farm at this point.” Koza hissed as a rock got caught under her fingernail.

The dirt was still stiff and semi-frozen just a few inches below the surface. She would have to find a way to warm it before planting the root vegetables.

Leliana walked down the row of beds that had just recently started to sprout. “So, you have many connections with the Wardens then? They have all but disappeared from Fereldan and Orlais, and the timing is suspicious.”

“I’m a rest stop, not a confidant. Have you tried asking Alistair? He’s the actual Warden.” Koza moved further down the row, plucking at more weeds. 

“Alistair has not been the most forthcoming. I would imagine that you, with your networks might know more. If there is information that you are not telling us…”

Leliana let the open-ended threat hang in the air.

Koza grabbed her trowel crossly.

“Not everything needs to be an interrogation Sister Nightingale. I would like to think that you at least trust me enough to be more straight forward.” Koza’s voice was raised, disturbing the quiet of the evening. 

She stabbed the trowel into the ground again, but found herself holding it there, her hand firm on the smooth wooden handle. The ensuing silence felt like a chastisement. “I’m sorry. That may have been too brusque of me. It’s been a long day.”

“No,” said Leliana. “I have been mistrustful of late. It is…a difficult role to escape. You must know that you have become entrenched quickly. The Herald trusts you above anyone else. That alone is dangerous. There is much riding on our success.”

Koza wondered if Leliana was more like Cullen and Cassandra than she showed. The Nightingale was very good at being unflappable. She was always poised, composed and pretending to be omniscient. Experienced in The Game and determined to win at any cost. But she had her own demons too, and had lost friends recently, including the Divine. And there were so many people depending on her now. Maybe, just like Cullen and Cassandra, she was suffering too, unsure of how to continue or who she could trust, ready to lash out at anyone who got too close or seemed a threat. It seemed like the Inquisition was full of that sort.

Koza wished she could talk to the Leliana who cooed over nugs and sang so beautifully for her friends. Instead, she was faced with the Nightingale who was still deciding if she could be trusted. 

“Much is riding on our success, but even more riding on how we get there,” Koza said, looking up at Leliana. “Mother Giselle mentioned that this Inquisition could ‘deliver us or destroy us.’ I know which I prefer, and I know that like begets like. Not everything has to be daggers in the night. Alistair and Mahariel both talked about a devout bard who believed in fate and kindness who enjoyed singing and games more than suspicion and murder. She sounded like a good person. I hope you haven’t forgotten her.”

Koza knew she was playing with fire.

The open look on Leliana’s face closed off and her eyes were as chilling as ice. “Things change. Choices must be made. This is not what I came here to talk with you about. This arrived for you.” She tossed an opened letter on the ground by Koza’s feet. “A friend in Redcliffe asks for your aid.” She turned and left, disappearing easily into the shadows of sunset. 

Koza glanced at the letter, quickly reading the message. It was indeed a call for help. It was coded of course, but she should have expected the Inquisition’s spymaster to crack it easily. The interception of her mail was a problem that would have to be dealt with later. 

However, the request for aid would have to be dealt with soon. She could use tomorrow to check on what she had missed since she had been gone from Haven and make sure that things would continue to run smoothly once she departed again.

Koza continued weeding until the moons were high in the sky and Alistair joined her in the dirt.

“I’m not going to apologize,” he stated. His voice was firm and didn’t hold its usual playfulness.

“I wouldn’t accept it anyways.” She still wasn’t in the mood to talk to him. She hoped that he might take the hint and leave.

He didn’t.

“You’re doing a good thing here. People were talking about you. Some kids tried to beat me up because they saw us arguing,” he said. “I understand why you feel you need to stay, but do you understand why I want you to leave?”

“Do you know why I want you to leave?” Koza was in a stubborn mood, unwilling to be yielding. She glared at Alistair mulishly.

He looked so sincere and open, almost vulnerable. The anger that was still stirring strongly in her began to ebb.

“I don’t leave my friends behind in dangerous places,” Alistair said. “I have precious few friends to lose as it is, and you know how easily I lose things.”

I’ve grown to care for you, he didn’t say, but his body language said it for him.

Lost in her own thoughts, Koza didn’t notice. 

It would be too easy for her to lose Alistair, if he stuck around. Koza thought of Adamant. She remembered having to choose to leave someone in the Fade with a nightmare demon. Could she change things enough to avoid that? Would changing it mean that something worse could happen down the line? She remembered something about the evil magister being able to manipulate Grey Wardens through the corruption of the blight. She thought of Alistair’s loyalty, his kindheartedness, and his integrity. She was terrified of him dying – either when Haven fell or at Adamant or any time in-between, and she wondered if that was the kind of terror that he was feeling too. Her chest felt cold and tight. The burning heat of her anger had fled.

“You’re being quiet. I’m not good with quiet. You’re not still mad at me, are you?” Alistair moved around so that he could see Koza’s face. He panicked when he saw how watery her eyes looked. “No, no no. You’re the big tough one. You don’t cry. Lorn will kill me if I make you cry. Never mind that, the scary mage will kill me.”

“I’m not crying, asshole.” Koza rubbed at her eyes with the palm of her hand, probably smearing soil on her face. “I’m just tired and it’s been a really long day. I should go to bed. There’s some rooms above the Tavern. I’m pretty sure the rest of them are full, but I’ve got one reserved. If no other rooms are free, there’s plenty of space for you on the floor.”

“So you’re alright then,” he asked, “with me staying, that is?”

Koza gave him a baleful look that was weakened by the dirt smudged around her eyes. 

“Just be sure to run when I tell you to,” she replied.

Yes, he thought. But only if she was coming too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, guys, why did no one tell me that I spelled the TITLE wrong?
> 
> I don't always look at words the right way and that leads to adding letters or moving them around, so I got Theodosian instead of the proper Thedosian. Ack!
> 
> But, I think it's fixed now. Maybe.
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much for reading. Your comments and kudos brighten my days <3


	4. Chapter Four: Every man judges others by himself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is guilty of something, especially those who have made the inquisition their home.
> 
> That sort of guilt can drive a person to change the future.
> 
> Also, what Dragon Age story is complete without weird magic?

Ch. 4

Daily Almanac Advice: “Every man judges others by himself”  
__________________________________________________________________

A fight began. 

It started simply, when a mage walked by a templar and the two bumped shoulders. The templar spat at the mage’s feet and the mage called the templar a ‘filthy butcher who should watch where he was going’. 

Adaar, heading to the Chantry, watched all of this transpire, frozen in panic as the situation escalated. He hovered anxiously to the side as the Templar and the mage confronted each other, their tense interaction turning serious and biting. His shuffled steps, forward and back, compacted the snow beneath his feet. He should do something, he should get them to calm down. 

Anxiety held heavy shackles over his arms and legs. Uncertainty clogged his throat. His heart beat an unsteady, staccato rhythm against his ribs that threatened to deafen him. 

A crowd gathered, drawn by the energy in the air and the strained relations between the different factions that made the Inquisition their home. It wouldn’t have been so bad, had it just been the two men against each other. Adaar had seen such posturing before, and it typically ended with harsh words but no blood, both parties backing down and going their separate ways. 

The presence of a crowd changed things. With a crowd, neither man was willing to back down, both afraid to lose face and egged on by their compatriots.

Adaar knew he should step in, that he should do something to stop the fighting before it got worse, before someone got hurt. He couldn’t step in. He wouldn’t know what to say; he would probably make it worse.

He ran.

It was the right time of day, he knew where she would be. Koza would know how to handle it. He had seen her handle many of the petty conflicts that had sprung up around Haven and he had seen her brought in to act as a mediator between groups of refugees and recruits. She was a voice of authority people would listen to.

The apothecary’s hut was thankfully close to the Chantry, and Adaar arrived quickly. Slamming the door open, he made an entrance. Snow swirled in around his hulking form in the doorframe. The door bounced off of the wall with a loud bang.

A couple of children, Koza’s normal helpers, startled, dropping and shattering the vials they had been holding. Adan cursed at him, while Koza had turned at the sudden noise, holding her guisarme at the ready. The point dropped from Adaar’s throat when she recognized him as the loud intruder.

“Come quickly,” Adaar pleaded. “I need your help. There’s a fight at the Chantry.”

True to her nature, Koza followed without delay, bolting past him as they ran. 

The mage and the templar were circling one-another now, a large crowd almost blocking them from view. Hisses and jeers were being thrown at both sides. It seemed like half of Haven was gathered there.

The mage raised his staff and the Templar moved to draw his sword. 

Koza elbowed her way in from one side just as Cullen shoved his way in from the other. Noticing each other at the last moment, they both nodded, innately communicating a plan of action. Battle instinct, it seemed, was a universal language.

They stood back to back, blocking the mage and the templar from one another. Cullen shoved the templar back while Koza barred the way of the mage, the wooden pole of her guisarme a barrier between them and held firm against the mage’s staff.

“Enough!” They shouted in tandem.

Adaar watched from the edge of the crowd as the Commander of the Inquisition’s forces and the farmer separated the feuding factions, rebuking them with reminders of duty and unity. The two of them played off of each other as though they had planned this beforehand. Cullen, in full armor and gear, laid in to the Templars and the soldiers who had crowded around and encouraged the fight. Koza, in colorfully embroidered linen clothes with a flower scarf tying back her hair, was just as firm and commanding with the mages and the refugees.

Adaar itched to step in, to add something to the conversation. Cullen and Koza had the situation well in hand, and the people looked up to them, but Adaar felt he should be doing more.

People looked up to him now, they asked for his opinion and his choice. He was unaccustomed to it, but he wanted to live up to their expectations. He wanted to be the person Cassandra demanded or the type of person Koza told him he could be. He wanted to be the type of person Varric described in his stories.

But, instead of stepping in, he continued to watch as the tension ebbed and, if not peace, at least armistice reigned.

It looked like a peaceful resolution would be had, until Chancellor Roderick stepped forward with religious condemnations.

If Adaar were to say that he hated a person, Chancellor Roderick would likely be named. Every experience that Adaar had with the religious man was contentious, often with Roderick calling for Adaar to be executed. That sort of talk did not lend itself to fondness.

Fortunately, Cullen and Koza managed to disperse the crowd before Roderick worked himself up to full bluster and furthered the fracture in the budding Inquisition. Roderick’s words reached few ears, and even fewer still listened to him.

That didn’t, however, stop Chancellor Roderick from continuing his tirade to the Commander and the farmer. He shouted about proper authority, shook his fist at the idea of the Inquisition acting in lieu of or perhaps in defiance of the Chantry.

Koza and Cullen stood side by side, looking very similar with their arms crossed and looks of bored annoyance on their faces as they dealt with the cleric. Occasionally, their eyes met, communicating curt solidarity.

Watching all of this, Adaar edged closer as he saw Koza’s eyebrow begin to twitch, a sign he had begun to recognize in relation to her occasionally explosive temper. He had only seen her lose her temper twice now, but both times had been memorable. He may not like Roderick, but he didn’t want Koza to scare the old man into a heart attack. That would probably be bad.

As Adaar moved, the snow crunched under his feet. Roderick turned his head, focusing on the qunari and narrowing his eyes spitefully. The sneer on his face deepened the lines around his mouth and eyes.

“Ah, yes, and the worst of it all arrives. The so-called ‘Herald of Andraste,’” Roderick spat. “The horned, heretical apostate who should have been brought to trial and executed at the start of all of this!”

Adaar winced – not at the insult, he was used to such words, but that the dark look they caused on Koza’s face. Her guisarme was still in her hand, but she didn’t brandish it. She used it more as a walking stick as she advanced, the blunt end digging into the hard earth.

She stalked forwards, shoulders back and head straight, a dangerous cast to her features. Her predatory movement was a call to beware as she trod into the personal space of the Chancellor. He backpedaled, unused to physical confrontation. Koza didn’t lay a hand on him, but her presence was threat enough. 

“Shut up,” Koza commanded. “We have given you a chance to say your part, and now you will listen.”

Roderick looked to the Commander for help, but Cullen stood still before the Chantry with his arms crossed, watching. If Adaar had to guess, he would say that the Commander seemed amused by all of this. There was the hint of a bemused grin on his face.

Koza pinned Roderick in place with her steady stare. She looked as immovable as a mountain for all that she was a small human. Adaar could imagine her standing against armies like this. 

“You are the only one insisting that we cannot work together,” Koza said, her voice dangerously calm and loud enough for all eavesdroppers to hear, though she didn’t shout. “You are the one stirring up the pot, spreading words of dissent and hatred. Hatred should have no place here, Chancellor. This is a place of unity and equality.”

She looked over her shoulder at Cullen, her pose softening into something more deferential. “What do you think, Commander? Should the people of the Inquisition listen to this cleric, a bureaucrat who wasn’t important enough to be at the Conclave? We have shown him forbearance, but is it time to shut him out?”

The corner of Cullen’s mouth pulled up as he replied. “Certainly not. He holds no authority. The Chancellor is toothless, but we’ll not make him into a martyr by taking any action against him. I will talk to my men, make sure they understand that there will be accord within the Inquisition be they mage, Templar, or otherwise. I ask that you do the same among yours. Meanwhile, we can make plans to meet with those who have a real voice in the Chantry. A party will depart for Val Royeaux shortly.”

Koza gave a small bow of agreement and walked away, not sparing a glance for the sputtering Chancellor behind her.

Alistair, drawn in by the noise of the crowd, caught up to her as she left. 

“Like I said, oddly in charge for someone I came to rescue. You and Cullen seem friendly at least.” Alistair looked down at Koza, his eyes warm and teasing. He was proud of the way she had handled herself. It was strange to see such a different side of her, ordering people about and settling disputes, a far cry from seeing her cooking dinner for her farm-hands or wrestling with a slobbery dog. He had always known her to be capable, but this was something more. He didn’t know quite what to make of it yet. 

Koza rolled her eyes at him. The standoff with the Chancellor had made her tense. She rolled her shoulders to work out the tightness that had built in her back. When Roderick had threatened Adaar, she had seen red and she was doing her best to calm back down. Alistair’s presence helped with that and she knew she was lucky to have him by her side, even if it could prove to be very unlucky to him. She wouldn’t let her temper get the better of her. She wouldn’t go around bloodying the noses of everyone who pissed her off. She rolled her shoulders again.

“I thought we already discussed this ‘rescuing’ thing,” she complained. “And I’m hardly in charge. It’s more that I make myself too loud for them to ignore. Cullen had things under control there; I was just lending an extra hand. I’m fairly certain that he only puts up with me because it means fewer people come to him to complain.”

“Oh, and I suppose they refer to every old person around here as ‘Ser’ or ‘Lady’,” he said, bumping into her playfully. 

Koza’s nose scratched up in distaste at the tiles. While Adaar and his growing inner circle mostly referred to her as just Koza or occasionally ‘hey you’, the people around Haven tended to refer to her with more deferential terms that made her skin crawl. She was no Lady, as she had told them many times over, she held no titles or pedigrees but the title had stuck. It felt like a collar around her neck. Alistair joking about it made it chafe less.

“Of course, Lady Alistair,” Koza replied with a bow. She was smiling now, as she replied, and Alistair was glad to see it. The dark look on her face earlier had made his chest tight. He much preferred to see her smile. 

“I tried to get them to stop, but…,” she trailed off, shrugging at the futility of her efforts. Her movement was looser and lighter than before.

Alistair favored her with a crooked smile and looped an arm over her shoulder, drawing her to his side. It was hard to miss the way she shivered in the cold. Her coat had been left in the apothecary in her haste. “Alright then, Lady ‘Hardly in Charge’, let’s get you off to wherever you need to boss people around next.”

__________________________________________________________________

Bent over a table made from a wooden board placed atop two barrels, Koza squinted her eyes against the glare of the snow. What did Commander Cullen have against being comfortable? Still, he had asked her for assistance with this, and so she would help. However, looking at the duty rosters outside while the sun glinted brightly off the white earth was headache inducing, and she was getting a pain in her back.

She was pleased that Cullen was delegating tasks. He had too much resting on his shoulders as it was, but she was sure that he only gave her this duty because his withdrawal symptoms were making it difficult to focus on numbers and small writing. That or, in a strange way, he was trying to punish her for bringing Alistair to Haven. It was more likely to be the latter. She hadn’t missed the way the two men squared off around each other like hissing cats. 

She ran the numbers again, working for fair placement of the soldiers and recruits, making sure that there was an even spread of experience and inexperience in each group.

She continued to write and calculate until she saw a pair of feet approaching her, attached to a nervous-looking Adaar. He waved awkwardly as she gazed up at him, and Koza realized that her squinting due to the snow-glare and her growing headache probably looked like anger.

“What’s going on,” she asked, when it didn’t seem like Adaar would speak first.

“Are you okay? I saw you arguing with the Warden yesterday,” he said, shifting from foot to foot. “If you don’t want him here, I could talk to Cassandra about it. She could make him leave you alone.”

Warmed by Adaar’s concern, Koza sighed. “Don’t worry about it. Alistair’s a friend, even if he drives me crazy. Was there anything else?”

Adaar fidgeted, running the edge of his fingers over the bridge of his nose. “We’re leaving for Val Royeaux soon,” he said.

“That’s nice,” Koza replied, turning her attention back to the papers in front of her. The distribution for the night watch didn’t quite look right. “May your travels be safe. Make sure to try some of the desserts there. The food’s about the only good thing in Orlais.”

Adaar cleared his throat, bringing Koza’s attention back to him. He looked even more nervous if that was possible. “I was hoping that you would come too.”

A raised eyebrow was her immediate response. “What use would I be in Val Royeaux? I have very little involvement in any affairs there.” And truly she didn’t, she tended to avoid the place. Something about the city had always unnerved her. Perhaps it was the way that Orlesians played the Game with one another, all falseness and lies, or maybe it was the shadow of the Chantry and the White Spire. That or it was the horrid conditions of the alienage where elves were forced to live on top of one another in squalid conditions like the ghettos she had been told of in her childhood. She didn’t like that city. 

“I’d like for you to be a part of my traveling party,” Adaar explained. “Like Cassandra or Solas.” He looked at Koza hopefully.

She turned her gaze to the side, looking at the recruits training in the field and frowned. The letter from Redcliffe was heavy in her pocket. She wished she could. Adaar was awkward, gangly and uncertain, reminding her of a nephew she had once helped raise. That boy had been a gentle soul too. If she had her way, she would be there for Adaar, as a friend and as a pillar of support. The world was in tumult and Adaar would need good people at his back if he was going to make it through. But those people weren’t supposed to be her. That wasn’t the way the story went. 

If she meddled too much, became too involved, would she change the story? 

And what about her people? Koza had lived in Thedas for years now. She had made friends, made enemies, and made a sort-of family. She knew what was coming and what would happen to some of them if she didn’t take action.

She could not doubt. She could not fear. She would be the white eagle, a symbol of loyalty and resolution. The story needed to be changed. She had changed it before – maybe this time, the Inquisition could be more, could help more.

She knew where to start. The truth was, it had already started.

She met Adaar’s gaze steadily, willing him to understand. “I’m sorry. I know I said I would be there when you asked, but there’s more that I need to do here. We just returned from the Hinterlands, and there’s someone I need to speak with in Redcliffe. I’d be nothing more than another warm body in Val Royeaux and the Chantry and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”

Adaar looked crestfallen, and Koza could guess why. Out of all of the people in the Inquisition, she was the one he had gotten the closest to, but she couldn’t be his security blanket. He would need to grow to trust and rely on his other companions if he was to succeed, and was so much that she needed to do, and much of it needed to happen soon. A long detour to Val Royeaux was out of the question.

“I’m sorry,” she offered again. 

Smiling gently, Adaar gave a small shake of his head. “No,” he said, “I know how busy you are. You and Josephine seem to be the ones who keep everything going. It was a selfish request.”

“You’re allowed to be selfish sometimes. Be plenty selfish in Val Royeaux and take a chance to enjoy the food,” she quipped, settling back in to work, guilt lingering in the back of her mind.

Adaar would be fine without her. He would have to be.

__________________________________________________________________

Sleep was different in Thedas. Each night, Koza found herself in the eerie realm of the fade. There, nothing and everything was real. Everything and nothing was permanent.

Instead of sleep giving way to dreams that she would barely remember in the morning, Koza’s sleep was filled with exploration and thought. It was like having more waking hours and she took advantage of it.

She delighted in how the Fade listened to her, recreating places and scenes from her memory. Sometimes, she ran across the creaking wooden boards of pirate ships, her arms strained as she pulled herself up into the rigging, pretending to be a pirate queen aboard the Black Pearl or the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Sometimes, she wandered her farm, planning the season’s planting and deliberating over rotation schedules. Sometimes, she sat in her childhood home, singing almost forgotten lullabies in an almost forgotten language as she touched every wall, every piece of furniture, and every knickknack that connected her to the past. A spirit of Despair often sat in the corner and watched her in those moments. It’s little, bare toes curled into soft rugs, rocking back and forth in a form of catharsis. 

But oh, the spirits.

Koza loved the spirits with their single-minded natures. Their steadfastness was reminiscent of the cornerstones of her life. Valor was like the collies that guarded over her sheep. Love was like the cows who leaned heavily against their friends and gave heavy sighs. Pride was like the rooster who always chased her across the yard. Curiosity was like the kittens who got into everything. But she liked the spirit who called itself Defiance the most. It was like her goats, defying gravity on the mountainside, defying common sense, defying orders, and stubborn as hell.

Koza often told Defiance that the two of them were alike in many ways, but Defiance always argued otherwise.

It took brave spirits to find her in the Fade though. Daring had been the first to approach, and it told her that the Fade was wrong around her. It couldn’t tell her why, just that she was backwards.

Koza had no clue what that meant, at least, not at first.

Intuition had helped her solve the puzzle. It had watched her, staying on the perimeter as the Fade bent around her, solidifying under her feet and stilling in under her gaze. 

“You make it real,” Intuition said, with a many toned voice. “You are upside-down from what should be. An inversion of the gateway. What is outside is in and inside is out. Do you mean to do that?”

She didn’t, but she found that she could control it with determined thought. When she did, the Fade distorted around her, no longer as tangible where she touched. The spirits became less afraid to approach.

She tried to do it while awake. It worked.

The effort left her weak and panting, but, as she had sat under an apple tree, she had tugged the Fade around her in the waking world. She could see the tree growing and shrinking in the Fade going back and forth between what it was, what it had been, and what it could be. A spirit, she couldn’t tell what sort, peered out at her from between the leaves until her energy faded, once again closing the bridge between the two worlds. The apple tree was just an apple tree again, and she was alone and exhausted.

It was like wiping the fog from a window – she could see into the Fade and those in the Fade could see out. But nothing could transverse the barrier.

She had found that, without something to link to like lyrium, the spirits couldn’t pass through. She couldn’t pass through either, try as she might. The barrier between the two worlds held firm, denying her access though she could see through it. 

__________________________________________________________________

 

Koza was walking back to the tavern from the Chantry when Solas approached her. His face was calm, but there was a sharp set to his eyes. It was like being a child again, doing something naughty and being watched by a disapproving nun. She wondered what had him so bothered, but he wouldn’t tell.

He bid her to follow him, stating that he had some business he wanted to discuss with her. Warily, she followed, through Haven to a more secluded area.

They made it in to the cabin he had claimed as his own before he turned on her with displeasure. “You must think yourself quite clever.”

“Pardon, what?” She was confused. She had not spoken much with Solas, except for a couple of passing words when they had traveled together to Dennet’s. Trying to recall if she had done something to offend him, she came up with nothing.

“Mages like you always think themselves clever, beyond those that they subjugate,” Solas intoned, disdain dripping from him.

With furrowed brow, Koza crossed her arms. “I don’t have time for this, whatever this is. I haven’t subjugated anyone.”

She turned to leave, but a hand shot out, pinning her in place.

Koza raised her arm to bat his hand away, but his grip was unyielding. Her annoyance faded to fear as she stared at the feral face of the normally mild-mannered elven apostate.

“Do not lie to me. Do you know what you’ve done,” Solas hissed, a snarl marring his usually pleasant, placid features. His fingers dug painfully into Koza’s shoulder.

Koza’s mind was racing. She knew who he was – what he was. She knew how dangerous he could be. That was why she had left him alone. She hadn’t been avoiding him per se, but she hadn’t gone out of her way to talk to him either. But she had no idea what he was talking about. 

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it can be fixed. Stop talking in riddles and we can sort this out,” she tried, her hand subtly moving to the dagger strapped at her side. She had been foolish and left her guisarme in her room, lulled into complacency in the relative safety of Haven. But what was a dagger against a god?

“You have trapped them. Bound them into servitude and likely corrupted their very nature,” he growled. There was a terrifying darkness to his eyes. Koza knew that, given the slightest reason, he wouldn’t hesitate in killing her. She wasn’t real to him, and even if she were, she didn’t think it would matter at this point.

She thought quickly. “The spirits!”

“Yes, the spirits. I have seen them disappearing from the Fade, being unwillingly bound to this world. Others have told me that it was your doing.” 

Koza could feel the chill of ice magic spreading from his hand into her arm. “They are free to come and go as they please,” she said. “I wouldn’t bind anyone, much less against their will.” 

Solas’s grip didn’t loosen, and the chill continued to spread.

“I can show you, in the garden” Koza gasped, her voice verging on fearful as the ice crept towards her heart and throat.

Solas dropped his grip on her and snarled for her to lead the way. The cold lingered in her arm. His stare was like a dagger pressed to her back.

Koza’s hands were shaking as she opened the flap to one of the hoop houses and led the incensed mage inside. Either the ancient elf would be able to see and understand what she had done or he would kill her. She really hoped that he wouldn’t try to kill her; she hadn’t set up contingency plans for that yet. 

Her runestones, touched with lyrium, were burning brightly with sunlight and warmth, allowing the plants to grow in the cold of the Frostbacks. Solas looked at them with hatred.

“You-,” he begain with nothing but loathing in his voice.

Koza held up a hand to stop him. “Please. Just, give me a moment to show you,” she said. “Let the spirits tell you for themselves.”

Warily, she backed away from him seated herself in the dirt, mindful to not disturb the rows of just sprouting plants, and set about to meditating, pulling on the strange power she had found within herself.

She had tried to experiment with magic shortly after her arrival to Thedas. She hadn’t been sure how to go about it, but she tried everything she could think of. She had felt silly, shouting spell names from the books of her childhood and waving sticks around like some demented Gandalf the Grey. Nothing happened. When she slept, she saw and remembered the Fade, so she concluded that she had to be some type of mage. But the magic wouldn’t come. She thought it possible that she was just strange, a foreigner to this world, outside of the normal conventions. 

But her talks with the spirits had shown her what she could do. She meditated and searched deep within herself until she found a spark. A small speck of energy that she could pull on until it expanded like a pop up tent. It wasn’t quite magic, at least not as she recognized it. 

It was that power that she called upon now, and it expanded around her in swirling mists and dancing waves.

Unfurling around her was a ghost of the Fade. A sickly green haze oozed through the hoop house, hidden from those outside due to the leather walls. Beneath the rune stone, a spirit took shape, it’s ghostly fingers holding on gently to the stone, only slightly suspended from the earth. It looked at Solas and Koza with curiousity, for that was what it was – Curiosity about the world and the green-growing things.

Koza’s eyes were closed as she focused on both releasing the energy and keeping it contained within the hoop house. She missed the look of wonder and terror on Solas’s face as the veil shifted as if it were a curtain being parted, allowing a glimpse at what was beyond. The two worlds were still separate, but around her was a view of what they could be if reunited – an overlay of the same space in two different planes.

The ancient elf surged forward, looking as if he was in a dream. The Fade merged with the waking world around him, surrounding him in the whispers of magic and secrets. 

“Who are you,” asked the spirit of curiosity. Its voice was childlike and multi-toned, as if several children were speaking at once. “I haven’t seen you before, have I?”

“I am Solas,” he replied, his voice soft again when faced with a spirit. “How is it that you came to be here? Are you trapped here, da’len?”

“The lady asked for us to help, and I wanted to know more. She called and I came in order to learn. You ask if I’m trapped? I don’t think so,” the spirit replied. “If I let go, I have to leave. Then how would I know what happens?”

“What happens with what?” Solas watched the spirit raptly, listening intently to its reply.

The spirit’s form wavered happily, shivering the way that object on the horizon do on hot days. “What happens with the children and the plants. Why are they different every day? Why do they change so quickly? I want to know what they will become. It’s so much easier to watch from here.”

“And you are-,” Solas began, but was interrupted as the green haze retracted from around him and the form of the spirit vanished from his gaze.

Koza leaned, slumped on the ground, breathing heavily. “Sorry,” she said, “I can only keep that up for so long.”

Solas looked at her, his face unreadable. “Do you know what you’ve done?” His voice was completely different this time, coaxing instead of furious. 

Shaking her head, Koza stood up on unsteady feet. “Not really,” she admitted. “I haven’t been able to find out much about it. I can’t do magic properly, it tends to explode in my face, but I can do that.” 

She brushed the dirt from the seat of her pants and cautiously met Solas’s gaze. “I swear to you that I’m not hurting them. I would never hurt them. I only ask the ones who want to see the world. And like curiosity said, when they let go of the stone, the connection is broken and they return to the Fade completely.”

The spirits were special to her. The thought of hurting them was beyond abhorrent. She had already seen some, pulled through the rifts and twisted beyond recognition and that had been bad enough. To cause something like that herself was unthinkable.

“You alter the veil,” Solas accused wonderingly.

“Maybe, but only temporarily, and I can’t do it for very long,” she admitted. More than a few minutes of it left her winded and exhausted. If she tried to use it for longer, she had to deal with migraines and vomiting. It wasn’t pleasant. She much preferred to speak with the spirits while she was asleep. 

“There are many who would kill you for possessing such a skill, those in Haven included,” he warned her. There may have been a threat in his words, but Koza was too tired to try to parse it out. 

There was a long list of things people would kill her for. She tended to ignore that list for her own sanity. “That’s why I don’t go around telling everyone.” 

“Did you always possess this ability?”

Koza felt like a mouse under a microscope. Solas’s focus and curiosity were unsettling as he didn’t look like he was seeing her but seeing through her. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I never did anything like it as a child. Maybe it happened with whatever that blood mage did to me when he summoned me, maybe I had it before. No way to know, really.”

She wasn’t lying but she thought it was more likely that it had to do with her not being from Thedas at all. 

“I have spent years wandering the Fade, learning its secrets, and never before have I come across someone with a similar skill. If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to study your ability. There may be much to learn from it.” Solas’s intense stare didn’t diminish. Koza wondered if he remembered that he was supposed to be playing the role of harmless apostate hermit. At the moment, he was more of a wolf.

“So, I take it that you’re not planning my death anymore,” she asked with a challenging raise of her eyebrow. ‘Don’t call the wolf from the woods,’ her grandmother had always warned her. It was an old saying that meant ‘don’t cause trouble for yourself.’ That warning had made six-year-old Koza spend days howling at the trees behind the house. She had never claimed to be wise.

Frowning, Solas extended a hand to help Koza remain on her feet as she listed heavily to the side. “I acted in haste,” he admitted. “There are many who would misuse spirits, corrupting their nature. I had not thought that I would find one who treats them with such regard.”

Koza shrugged, allowing his change in tone. She knew she wasn’t the only one with a temper, and if anyone could help her figure out what was transpiring, it would be the one who created the veil. Maybe, if they talked enough, she could convince him not to destroy the world. “Then it’s fine by me. I wouldn’t mind knowing more of it myself. For all I know, using it could accidentally open rifts or something. So long as the studying doesn’t cause any permanent harm, I’ll be there.”

As he left, Solas was lost in thought, scarcely seeing the world around him.

Koza was an unexpected mystery. She did not connect to the Fade as mages did, in fact she seemed to enforce reality around her, denying the Fade like a Templar. No, her ability seemed to be linked to the veil. She thought she was pulling on the Fade, but he could see otherwise. She moved the veil around her like a rock parted a stream, much like lyrium did, existing in both places at once. Solas had not thought such a thing possible. It was a curious skill, and one that could be useful to his mission. 

He would need to study it, think on it more. It could be that this would prove a mere distraction, but at least it would be an interesting one. The woman had no knowledge of her power, and he believed that he could easily guide her. It would not be difficult for one such as him to play the role of helpful and curious apostate to keep her in the dark.

__________________________________________________________________

The tavern was loud and boisterous that night as a shipment of ale from Honnleath had arrived earlier in the day with another one of Koza’s farm shipments. Several people were already drunk and more were well on their way. There was a feeling of optimism and good cheer in the air.

Koza walked through the crowd, intent on heading to bed, but was stopped by several people on the way. It was a normal occurrence. All throughout the day, she would be stopped by people with requests and work. This evening was the same. One man wanted particular goods in the next wagon and others wanted to ask about available payed work or the availability of help. One woman, a young elf, stopped Koza with a huge smile on her narrow face. She wanted to show Koza the letter she had written to her sister who was living in the alienage back in Denerim. It was the first letter that she had ever written, only learning her letters form the classes Koza taught, and she wanted to make sure it looked alright before she sent it off. Koza joined her at the table for a few moments as they went over the letter, reviewing spelling and grammar over ale before bidding each other good night.

It was much quieter and darker upstairs; the only light was from the cracks under leaking out from under a few of the doors, including hers. Koza opened the door slowly and quietly before slipping inside.

As expected, Alistair was seated at the small table wedged in the corner next to the bed, reading some correspondence by the light of a very worn-down candle. 

“Ah, so you’re finally working,” she snarked, startling Alistair into jumping and banging his knees into the underside of the table. The ink pot nearly fell over though Alistair caught it in the nick of time.

“Maker, what is it with women and swooping,” he complained. “And I’ve been working plenty.”

Koza moved to sit on the bed, the only other seat besides the floor in the small room, craning her head to catch a glimpse of the letters Alistair had spread on the desk. “That’s not what I heard from Josephine,” she said. “I heard that you were loitering around town and making a general nuisance of yourself, eating all of the cheese and drinking all of the ale.”

Koza could just make out the signature of Bann Teagan on one of the letters. The Bann always did like to add extra flourishes and size to his name, making it easy to distinguish at a glance.

“Was not,” Alistair argued. “I didn’t touch any of the Orlesian cheese. I left that for the dogs. And we can’t all be as busy as you are. Did you know, no fewer than five people threatened me on your behalf today? You’ve gathered quite the following, including the ‘Herald of Andraste.’ Well, I think he was trying to threaten me, but he was mostly doing a poor imitation of the Seeker. He’s bad at being scary for how large he is.”

The bed creaked as Koza scooted closer.

“Did you ever wonder if the threats aren’t because people like me but more because they dislike you?” She enjoyed the scowl caused by her teasing as Alistair grumbled about being a very likeable person. She agreed with him, but refused to tell him as much. It was too much fun to pull his pigtails.

Oh,” she said, remembering more of her conversation with Josie. “Did you know that Leliana thinks we’re sleeping together?”

Alistair turned red and started coughing, turning his face away from her. His hand reached for the back of his neck which was also turning red. “W-what? Maker, that woman is – Maker.”

Koza snickered and slipped out of her shoes before pulling her legs up to sit crisscross on the bed. “Well, you are sleeping in my room.”

“On the floor,” he corrected. “There’s no room anywhere else here and my tent got eaten by a bear. Also, have you seen how many people there are here? I was sleeping in the stable before you returned. I still have straw in my armor.”

“We know that,” said Koza, “but that doesn’t stop people from talking.”

“I – well – If it’s, um, impugning your honor, and –,” Alistair began, so red that Koza was beginning to worry for his health. The quill in his had creaked in protest of his grip.

Koza laughed bright and loud, interrupting him. “Impugning honor, really? I’m not some chaste noble who needs to be chaperoned and pure until marriage. I can make my own choices and those wagging tongues don’t bother me. But if it bothers you, at least you’ll have the room to yourself for the next week or so.”

Alistair stumbled over his words for a moment before settling on, “what? The room to myself? Where will you be?”

“Redcliffe,” she answered readily. “I’ve a friend there who’s asked me to check in on a little ‘situation’ they’re having. I won’t be gone too long.”

Alistair shuffled his papers and picked up the one with Bann Teagan’s signature on it, looking it over briefly while still conversing. “Who are you traveling with?”

“It’s just me,” she said. The journey to Redcliffe wasn’t that far and the Hinterlands had largely stabilized since Cassandra and Leliana had worked to clear out the rebel mage and Templar camps. The only thing she really would have to worry about were the small rogue groups and bears.

Running a hand through his hair, Alistair pursed his lips and re-read the letter. “Redcliffe, you say? Well, what a coincidence. I have business there too,” he said, much too lightly for Koza’s comfort. 

“That is a coincidence,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you’re thinking of me as a damsel again.”

Alistair’s gaze hardened as he met Koza’s eyes. It always threw her off when he got serious. “That’s not it at all. These are dangerous times, especially for a lone woman travelling around with what could be mistaken for a staff on her back. All it would take is a single arrow or a lucky blow. I know you can handle yourself, I helped teach you to fight, but this isn’t your farm. You don’t have your allies within shouting distance. You’re skilled, but you’re not invincible. I would feel infinitely better to know that you had someone at your back. And I have business in Redcliffe regardless. My un-ah, a former acquaintance of mine has written me to express his concerns about the mage situation in Redcliffe. There was an incident several years ago that has left him cautious. I should at least go and assess the situation. I owe him that much.”

Shame colored Koza’s face and she conceded his point. Alistair was right, and she was behaving foolishly. She was no longer the lost girl who denied the reality of her situation. She was Koza, leader of the farms, friend of the Inquisition, and keeper of secrets that could save hundreds. She would be an idiot to travel alone and risk the future for her own hubris. She cleared her throat to hide her embarrassment. “Then we leave for Redcliffe tomorrow. Together.”

She moved to gather her belongings into her pack before pausing. The mood was still heavy and oppressive in the room, but she could change that. “You know, this will only make the rumors about the two of us worse,” she said slyly. 

Alistair’s face grew red again with the force of his blush.

__________________________________________________________________

Leliana met them at the stables the next morning, a look of boredom on her face. “And where are you off to, so early in the day?”

Saddling her horse, Koza pushed down the heat of her temper. She would never get anywhere with Leliana if their conversations always became arguments. She would be calm and polite. She would hold her tongue. For now.

“You already read my letter,” she pointed out. “We’re off to Redcliffe. We should return before Adaar gets back from Val Royeaux.”

Leliana moved to stand between Koza and the road leading out of Haven. “You would leave behind your duties here?”

Koza’s hand tightened around the reins as she turned to mockingly stand at attention for the Inquisition’s spymaster. Though she stood deferentially and kept the proper tone of voice, it was clear that this was an act. She was not one of Leliana’s agents nor was she bound to the Inquisition by anything more than a sense of obligation and a contract for supplies. Both she and Leliana needed a reminder of that.

“My duties have been covered. I would not leave so irresponsibly. I left Amari in charge of the gardens. If you need her, she’s the dark-haired elf girl with a scowl on her face and too loud to miss. I asked Lysette and Josephine to help Cullen with his work for the interim. If Lysette can’t keep things straight for a week, no one can, and she knows enough to make both the Commander and the soldiers listen to her. The next cart isn’t due for a week and I sent Threnn’s requests off to Toph yesterday, and Threnn knows how to reach him if something needs changing. Adan’s being helped by Minaeve and a couple of the older kids and I’ve already written down all of the potions and tonics that I know. And you already know all of this because there’s been a rotation of scouts watching me. Is there anything else, Sister Nightingale?” 

All of the covert observation and subterfuge was rubbing Koza the wrong way. If Leliana suspected her of something, she should come out and say so. There was enough to do around Haven without assigning a rotation of scouts to follow her around all day.

“I suppose that will do for now,” Leliana acquiesced with a hint of a smile. “But there is something new that has come to my attention that the two of you are uniquely suited for. A Grey Warden by the name of Blackwall has been spotted by my scouts in the Hinterlands. Find him and see what he knows. Recruit him if you can.”

Koza and Alistair shared a glance. 

“I’ll see what we can do,” Koza said obligingly, before Alistair could speak.

As they finished readying their horses, Alistair took a moment to pull Koza to the side. 

“Warden Blackwall was presumed dead,” Alistair whispered, serious and subdued. “He disappeared years ago. Why would he reappear now? And why in Fereldan and not Orlais?”

“Could be that this isn’t Blackwall,” Koza said with certainty. And she knew it wasn’t. He was Tom or Thom or something like that, an Orlesian man who had done wrong in the past, but had been fighting for redemption ever since. She had a fondness for his character from the games she had once played as his story had always reminded her of another character from her childhood. His story was like that of Jean Valjean - a troubled man pursued by the law, on the run for years but lured back by the thought of someone else being executed in his stead. It was probably an archetype as old as time, but it rang true to human nature. She only hoped the man they were going to meet would live up to her expectations. She still wanted to believe in absolution and redemption.

“From what I’ve heard,” Koza continued, “he’s been doing good things around here. It’s worth talking to him, no matter who he is.”

She ignored Alistair’s frown as she mounted her horse and began their journey.

If she found herself humming “Who am I?” on the road out of Haven, well, there was no one around who would recognize it. She would allow herself that small moment of doubt and depression. 

The sentiment rang true to her as well. She knew the truth of what had happened and what could come, and yet she had stayed silent. There were many who would seek to imprison or execute her if they knew, as well they should. Through inaction, she had allowed hundreds of people to die at the Conclave. She couldn’t tell, wouldn’t tell.

How did it go again?

Right. 

‘If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned.’

__________________________________________________________________

The scenic village of wooden huts on the lake would have been peaceful if not for the sounds of battle and the sight of a bandit troupe attacking. The screams of people and livestock mixed together as blood was drawn and threats were made. The bandits were a cruel and desperate looking lot and, while Koza didn’t want to kill, she could see that they weren’t the sort who would stop until made to with force.

She and Alistair dismounted quickly, running to join the fray with weapons drawn. 

Amidst the chaos, Koza saw a bear of a man in Grey Warden armor, fighting smoothly and drawing the attention of the bandits away from the civilians. He was a big man, made larger by his heavy armor and massive shield. The bandits seemed wary of approaching them, and there was one who was either unconscious or dead at his feet, done in by a shield bash.

“Warden Blackwall,” she shouted in greeting, her guisarme held aloft as she waded into the battle, swiftly disarming a charging bandit with the hook before clobbering him in the chest with the blunt end. He fell backwards, struggling to breath and likely with a broken rib or two. “Incoming allies against the shitheads.”

A hail of arrows interrupted Blackwall’s response as he took shelter under his shield. Likewise, Alistair moved quick as lightning to hold his shield protectively over both himself and Koza.

Blackwall let out a thundering war cry, rallying the townspeople to join him in battle against the bandits besieging them. A couple of the smarter attackers turned tail and ran.

The bandits were no match for them in skill, but they did have numbers on their side. Koza worked to protect the backs of the unskilled civilians as they fought against those who were attacking their homes and families. She smiled grimly as a woman who she remembered seeing at a farm auction once slammed a bandit with the business end of a shovel before kicking him in the gut. It seemed she was a vicious with a fight as she was with haggling. 

One enterprising rogue tried to sneak up on Alistair from behind, a dagger in his hand, ready to slice at the Warden’s neck. Koza intercepted him with the point of her blade, grimacing as blood slid down to her hands. 

She knew that her own arms were bleeding from a myriad of small cuts and she had a slightly deeper cut on her back though that hardly slowed her down. Still, she mentally cursed her stupidity in not having armor on even as she taunted the enemy about how they would all look better as corpses. 

When the battle settled and the last bandit lay dead, she sighed heavily in relief, her arms shaking from exertion and adrenaline. The townspeople, for the most part, looked to be in good condition despite the attack. The woman she had recognized before was already ordering the children who had sheltered in the houses to start boiling water and gathering cloth for bandages.

Koza let out a hiss as Alistair grabbed her arm, lifting it to inspect her cuts.

“Where is your armor?” Alistair did not look happy. His face and armor were blood splattered and there was a small scrape on his cheek that would likely be joined by a dark bruise by nightfall. 

“Not where it needed to be,” she admitted. It had been foolish, but she hated riding in armor and she hadn’t expected the skirmish. It wasn’t a mistake she planned to make again.

The locals were pulling themselves together, coming down from the adrenalin high of the attack. They helped one another up and checked for injuries. Koza ran to grab her pack and began to distribute the few bandages and salves she had while Alistair grabbed one to make sure that she could tend to her own cuts later. He knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t think to keep one in reserve.

Blackwall ended a conversation with a local elder who was thanking him for his help, and tromped over to Koza and Alistair, sizing them up.

“You seem to know me,” he said, his voice deep and controlled, though his eyes kept shifting between the two of them. To Koza, it was a wonder that he had managed to keep up the charade of being a Grey Warden for so long if he normally acted so suspiciously.

“We’ve heard about you,” she corrected. “The Inquisition is interested in you. You’re an Orlesian Grey Warden, alone in Fereldan while the others of your order have been going missing. There are some who think it suspicious how the disappearance of the Wardens coincides so well with the explosion at the Conclave.”

“You think -,” Blackwall began, his face pinching in anger. 

“Koza, a moment?” Alistair pulled her to the side, turning his back on Blackwall and leaning in to speak in her ear.

“I can’t tell you how I know this, but he’s not a Grey Warden,” he whispered.

This Koza knew. Still, the man could be a great help to the Inquisition and his ability with a shield could protect Adaar out in the field. “Even so, he’s a strong warrior,” she argued. “I think we should recruit him anyways. I mean, look at him, he’s built like an oak tree, thick and solid, and he knows how to hold a sword. You’ve trained with the soldiers in Haven. Tell me we don’t need more people who know what they’re doing.”

“He’s an imposter,” hissed Alistair, “pretending to be a Grey Warden.”

“An imposter who’s been going around giving the Grey Wardens a good name. I’m sure he has his reasons,” Koza countered.

She could imagine why Alistair was so upset. Because of Duncan, the Grey Wardens meant everything to Alistair. He didn’t take his duty or his order lightly. But Blackwall could be good for the Inquisition, and if this fight was any indication, he would use his shield well to protect Adaar.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Blackwall sway and stare at them. He was beginning to look impatient, and it wouldn’t do to have him flee.

“I’m recruiting him,” Koza declared imperiously. 

Alistair looked resigned, but not too upset. “Maker’s breath, now I know why you and Mahariel got on so well. You both like to befriend scary suspicious strangers.” 

As Koza approached, Blackwall spoke out.

“You’re a farmer,” Blackwall accused. “Why are you here on some quest for Inquisition looking for Grey Wardens?”

“Not really my quest. The Inquisition asked that I talk with you while I was passing through,” Koza replied. “Besides, I’ve already got my own Grey Warden to deal with, though he’s Fereldan.” She jerked her thumb back, gesturing at Alistair.

Blackwall looked thrown, but he quickly composed himself. “Ah, of course. I hadn’t noticed him at first. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen another member of the order. But tell your Inquisition that I don’t know anything about Grey Warden activities to do with the conclave. What I do know is that no warden killed the Divine. Our purpose isn’t political.”

Koza hummed, as if committing Blackwall’s words to memory. “Well, thank you for your help. It’s been uniquely uninsightful.” She turned to go, silently counting one, two, three-

“Ah, Inquisition – farmer?”

She stopped and turned to Blackwall. “Koza,” she said.

“Lady Koza, then. This Inquisition of yours, they’re trying to find who killed the Divine?”

“And working on closing the hole in the sky,” she confirmed. “Don’t know what you’ve heard, but we’ve got a guy who can do it.”

Blackwall paused, looking torn, fighting an internal battle between doing what he thought was necessary and doing what he thought was best. “Then maybe I should lend my sword as well. Maybe you lot need me.”

Koza couldn’t help but grin. “I’m pretty sure I’m too low on the totem pole to be making these decisions, but as far as I’m concerned, welcome aboard Warden Blackwall. I’ll write a letter for you to pass on to the higher-ups. You’ll want to head west to Haven. Ask to speak with Josephine once you get there.”

Never let it be said that Koza was against a little matchmaking. She was sure that Josephine would find Blackwall’s tragic backstory horribly romantic once she got over the shock of it.

The letter took little time to write. It was a quick, subtly coded piece that would let Leliana know that Koza had sent Blackwall and that the man was trustworthy even though he wasn’t who he claimed to be. She wouldn’t lie to Leliana further and harm the Inquisition. But she had a small piece of insurance against the spymaster’s ire. Koza grabbed a small flower she had tucked into her bag and placed it safely in the folds of the letter before she sealed it with wax and her stamp. The flower was a delicate bloom, white around the edges and a soft red at the center – Andraste’s grace. 

Either the Nightingale would accept the letter and the truth or Blackwall would be turned away. Koza had done what she could. 

Now it was up to the man to live up to the title he fabricated and the Nightingale to decide whether or not to believe in something more than hatred and revenge again.

Koza had other business to attend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a monster - I thought about splitting it in half, but I liked where it ended (though I should add that it was only around 5000 words before I started revisions. 5 revisions later and...almost double the size). Thank you all for your kind words and kudos! You all are fantastic!
> 
> For reference:
> 
> This is the song Koza is humming in relation to Blackwall – “Who am I” Les Miserables https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPIos2mXbUE  
> The story of the white eagle, an apocryphal and oft embellished tale of the founding of Poland can be found here - https://pgsa.org/legend-of-lech-and-the-white-eagle/


	5. Chapter Five: Be what you appear to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trip to Redcliffe to see old friends results in changes to the status quo. Old secrets are revealed and the future begins to change.
> 
> AKA - Koza hates ocularum, Magisters, and lies

Ch. 5

Daily Almanac Advice: “Be what you appear to be”

\----------------------------------

The Hinterlands were rather beautiful to look at when not covered with the vestiges of war. The green leaves in the trees swayed beautifully against the blue of the sky. There was a cloud off to the left that looked like a fat pygmy goat. The warm sun felt amazing on Koza’s face as she lay on her back, stretched out on the ground by the river they had stopped to rest at. She smelled of horse and sweat, but she was too comfortable to care. A blade of grass ticked the back of her neck.

“Look, there’s something I should tell you before we get to Redcliffe,” Alistair said, hesitantly, crouching down to sit next to her prone form. She could tell that he had just been washing up in the river. His hair was dripping wet, and he smelled slightly of lavender. The jerk must have pilfered her soap.

“It’s about who I’m going there to meet with, and why,” he continued in her silence.

Koza hummed sleepily and closed her eyes against the sunlight. She could trust Alistair to keep watch for trouble.

“I never really told you where I came from, did I,” he asked. 

Neither of them had talked much about their childhoods, though for very different reasons. Neither had wanted to pry. Alistair didn’t want to be the king’s bastard; Koza didn’t want to relive the hurt of a lost family.

“You told me that you were raised by devout mabari with wings,” she countered. “It seems pretty implausible but I’ve seen your table manners.” 

Alistair laughed awkwardly. “You remembered that? Well, before that, I was raised in Redcliffe, by Arl Eamon. My mother was a serving girl at the castle who died in childbirth, and the Arl took me in. So, um, I kind of grew up calling him Uncle. The one who I’m going to speak to is Bann Teagan, who is also my uncle, sort of.”

Alistair was talking so quickly that it was hard to understand him. Koza contemplated sitting up to flick him in the head for worrying so much, but that was too much effort. 

“All right,” she said easily. “I mean, it was also pretty clear that you were raised by nobility.” She didn’t mention how much he resembled the paintings that could be found all around Denerim of the Theirin family line or that his story implied, incorrectly, that he was the Arl’s illegitimate child.

Alistair looked surprised. “Really? Because I only lived with Arl Eamon until I was eight. Then I kind of lived in the stables.”

Koza nudged him with her foot, refusing to sit up for this conversation. The ground was too comfortable and Alistair was being silly if he thought that his parentage, perceived or not, would matter to her. 

“It’s easy to tell,” she joked, “because only nobility are as weird as you are. Us common folk don’t have that kind of crazy in us.”

“You take that back,” Alistair demanded, much lighter and happier after his revelation. His smile was bright and open as he leaned over, dripping river water on her as he loomed. “You and Mahariel are two of the craziest people I have ever met.”

Koza opened her eyes to glare up at him, but struggled to maintain a straight face. Alistair’s warm brown eyes were glittering with mirth and she always found his joy to be infectious. 

She wanted to reach up and pull him down, to pepper his face with kisses until they were both breathless with laughter and make sure that he knew how much he meant to her, regardless of everything. She felt the familiar urge swirl within her, a curling warmth in her belly, until she let it go with a sigh. A promise, made to him years ago, stopped her from reaching out, but didn’t diminish her feelings. She couldn’t be his lover, but she could be the best damned friend he ever had. She was glad that, even with a hole in the sky and a false calling, they could have these moments. She was glad that, even with the false calling in his head, Alistair was still himself.

Her serious façade breaking, Koza shoved Alistair away playfully, complaining about how he was blocking her sunlight even as she grinned at him. She could be serious when they got to Redcliffe. For now, she could let herself have fun.

Their good mood faded as they journeyed closer to their destination.

Even from a distance, it was plain to tell that Redcliffe was overcrowded and bending under the burden of the rebel mages. Signs of human refuse the noise of too many people were all around. The closer they got, the more barren the landscape looked, scraped thin of anything edible or potentially useful. Koza had seen more ram skeletons than living rams in the past hour of riding. There were signs of rogue Templar camps, hidden among the hills and they both felt watchful eyes on their backs as they traveled down the main road.

Koza did her best not to be affected as they passed several abandoned farms with tools left out in the fields to rust. she could easily imagine the flight of the farms as the mage-templar war spread, the sounds and sights of people having to leave their land and former lives in a desperate attempt to survive. 

They would fix this, eventually, she promised herself. Adaar would close the hole in the sky and she would do whatever she could to help rebuild.

The entrance to Redcliffe was closed, and several guards stood watch at the roadway. A younger man dressed in a mage’s robe with a staff in his hand stepped forward to greet them, wary with a spell on his tongue, just in case.

Koza readied herself to speak, but it was Alistair who stepped forward to take charge, a fierceness to his demeanor. Though she was surprised, Koza was content to lean back in her saddle and watch how he would proceed. It wasn’t often that she saw Alistair in a professional capacity as a warrior and a Grey Warden, but she had no doubts as to his capability and would gladly follow his lead. 

It didn’t hurt that he was nice to look at from behind, dressed in Grey Warden blues, sitting handsomely atop his horse with a commanding force about him. 

Koza saw the king he could have been as he addressed the mage. “I was summoned here by Bann Teagan. These lands are his and should be under his control. Tell me, why is it that a mage, not one of the Redcliffe guard, is the one refusing travelers entrance?” 

The mage paled and genuflected, a bit of hero worship for the Warden on his face, before signaling hurriedly for the gate to be opened. “Didn’t know you were a friend of the Bann’s, Ser. The Redcliffe guard are spread a bit thin these days. I’ll make sure you’re brought to the Bann right away.”

As they stepped through the gates, Koza wobbled, overcome by a feeling of dizziness and disorientation as time shifted uneasily around her. Alistair and the mage leading them through didn’t notice it, but the horses began shuffling nervously against their leads. They could feel it too. 

The veil around Redcliffe was unstable, bunching up and thining out irregularly as though an invisible thread was being tugged. It felt horribly wrong, and Koza was willing to bet anything that it had to do with the time magic that the Tevinter Magister was attempting to cast. She probably didn’t have much time before he succeeded. 

A warm hand grabbed her by the elbow, steadying her and Koza looked up to see Alistair looking at her with concern. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Maybe we should head to the Gull and Lantern first and get you something to eat.”

Koza shook off his hand and smiled reassuringly, steeling herself against the feeling of wrongness under her skin. She could already see Alistair’s unease at the state or Redcliffe in the deepening lines around his eyes and mouth. He didn’t need to be worried about her as well. 

“I’m fine,” she said. “Go meet with the Bann. I’ll either meet you at the castle or I’ll be at the Gull by sunset.” She had business of her own that needed seeing to.

He squeezed her arm gently and watched her for a moment before he allowed himself to be led off, leaving Koza behind. 

Adjusting to the tumultuous energy around her, Koza set off.

The streets of Redcliffe were crowded and busy as the rebels and the remaining locals went about their daily business, chatting about the latest gossip and bartering for the meager supplies. The air smelled heavily of fish and of too many bodies and not enough soap. Koza made her way through, walking swiftly and confidently, not wanting to be marked as an outsider. She didn’t need to bring attention to herself. 

Passing the main square, she went towards the docks, heading to a house with a fern frond carved crudely in the doorway. She knocked five times in a simple rhythm and the door opened to reveal a slightly plump woman with frizzy red hair tied back in a loose bun. 

“Bout time you got here,” the woman said grumpily, her hands on her rounded hips. She embodied the same annoyed yet aloof nature that most cats naturally possessed.

“I left only a day after I got your letter, Triss. It’s not like I can bend time,” Koza replied with a crooked grin. 

Triss frowned and beckoned her inside, closing the door firmly behind them. 

The small house was cluttered; every horizontal surface was covered with books, bits of paper, and empty or half-empty mugs. Some papers were pinned to the walls, covered with complex symbols and calculations, Triss’s attempts at understanding the breach and the strange magic covering Redcliffe. It looked like gibberish to Koza, but Triss saw harmony in the numbers.

“So you can feel it too,” Triss said, referring to the arcane energy twisting the village, attempting to move it against the flow of time.

Koza nodded. The uncomfortable feeling that was making her stomach twist wasn’t something she thought anyone could miss. It felt like a crime against nature.

Yet no one she had passed had seemed disturbed.

“It doesn’t seem like most of the other mages here noticed,” she commented.

Triss clucked like an annoyed goose and settled her hands back on her hips.

“Please,” she said with a scoff, “most mages try to pretend that the fade doesn’t even exist, like it’s some boogey man that will only hurt them if they acknowledge that it’s there. They never bother to learn how to read the veil. A bunch of nug-headded nitwits if I ever saw any.” She looked offended, as though Koza were trying to lump her in with the mages she belittled.

Koza soothed Triss’s bruised ego with bantering words and plenty of questions as the redhead updated her on the status of Redcliffe. 

“You also mentioned that a couple of the Tranquil went missing,” Koza prompted as Triss got lost on a tangent about equational mapping of Fade energy flux. Half of the words the woman said flew over Koza’s head anyways, but math tied to magic was even worse. She didn’t need to know a transform that could solve how the Fade moved. She needed to know what she could do to help.

“We sent the ones that we could off to your woman, Lorn,” Triss informed her. “She confirmed that they arrived and Zophia and I have been keeping a close eye on the rest. Waesucks, you were right. The circle mages seem pretty content to leave the Tranquil in the wilderness to rot after the Circles fell. The Tranquil give me the shivers as bad as any other mage, but they don’t deserve that. Worse was, the Circle twits didn’t give a lick when started going missing around here never mind you that it was right around when the fade started to get strange.”

“I’m willing to bet that was shortly after the ‘Vints showed up,” Koza said. She had seen at least three since entering Redcliffe, their tan skin and ostentatious cloths clearly marking them. Alexius Gereon was already there with some of the Venatori.

“Noticed them too? Not hard to miss, though. They stick out like a floater in a fountain. I don’t think any of them know the definition of ‘subtle’. Too busy being plumped up peacocks.” Triss sat down at the rickety table in the middle of the house. One of its legs was shorter than the other, but had been propped up by a circle tome. Triss picked up a mug on the table to take a drink but wrinkled her nose at the smell and set the mug back down.

“No one’s said anything?” Koza asked. “I would imagine that ‘Vints arriving would raise some concerns at least among some of the mages.”

“Too scared too,” Triss answered with a sneer. She did not hold circle mages and their ilk in high esteem. Koza had heard countless rants about the topic. “Sure they talk among themselves like flustered hens, but they won’t go to the Bann or the guard. Their position is too uncertain. The word is that the Bann is close to kicking them out and there are Templars ready to bust down the door.”

“And if I offered a safe way out?” Koza placed her thumb against her lip thoughtfully, worrying the nail with her teeth. If she played her cards right, she could send some people through the farm and bring others to Haven. It would be tricky, but she had to try. Alistair’s presence would complicate things.

“Not many would take you up on it,” Triss replied. “I would. Zophia would too, and we could easily get most of the remaining Tranquil if you’ve got tasks for them. They don’t have desires, but they all say that they like to be useful. But most of the mages would take uncertainty all cramped up together over uncertainty in the big scary world, the ninnies.”

Koza nodded, considering. It would be a task and would strain her network for a while, but she could make it work. Better to have some struggles for a time than risk the mages and tranquil being enslaved or killed once the magister worked his time magic. She was fairly confident that, if she got them out of Redcliffe before his spell took effect, they wouldn’t be caught in the time shift. The trick would be to get them out without the other rebel mages turning against them.

“Go to Zophia and any mages you think will keep quiet about it,” she requested. “We leave tomorrow morning.”

\----------------------------------

Inside Redcliffe castle, Arl Teagan sat on a plush divan and sipped tea while observing his nephew. They had discussed banal matters, catching up on each other’s lives since they had last talked and, as topics ran dry, they had lapsed into silence.

Teagan couldn’t help but wonder at how Alistair looked more and more like his father as the years wore on. He could see the echoes of his dead brother-in-law and friend’s face in that of the man before him. 

Alistair sat uncomfortably on the ornate arm-chair, hoping that he wouldn’t drop the tea cup and stain the carpet. He set the cup down on the saucer, wincing at the clatter as some tea sloshed over the edge. He cleared his throat anxiously. “Well, er, mages,” he began. “You wanted to speak with me about the mages.”

Teagan placed his cup down and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped together. “The mages,” he said with gravitas. “The leader of their rebellion, Grand Enchanter Fiona, contacted Queen Anora when this whole mess started, and her majesty graciously offered Redcliffe as a temporary home for them.”

His voice was bitter. He had always known that mages were dangerous but after his experience with Connor during the Blight, when his young nephew had been possessed and he himself had been controlled by the demon while a blood mage poisoned his brother, he knew the worst of what mages could do. If he had his way, the circles would never have fallen or even allowed the mages to think of rebelling. They were better kept locked up where they could hurt no one. Having so many right outside the castle gates was grating.

“I don’t suppose you or Uncle Eamon could petition her?” Alistair asked, naively in Teagan’s opinion.

“Eamon and I are of the mind that this is an extension of Anora’s grudge against you. However, she has no true control over these mages and has no interest in assisting us. No, we have been abandoned to the mercy of these fiends.” The look on Teagan’s face was dark. Years of friction between Redcliffe and the Queen had worn away at him and the weight and threat of the mages looming overhead had nearly broken him. 

“Is there no way to get the mages to leave peacefully?” Alistair asked, at a loss for what to say.

Teagan sighed and stared at his clasped hands. “If only it were so easy. Where would they go? No sane Arl or Bann will want them on their lands. None of the insane ones want them either.”

The fire crackled and popped, the only sound in the room as Teagan finished his tea. Alistair shifted in his seat again, distinctly uncomfortable in the opulent room crowded with oppressive thoughts.

There was a knock at the door, breaking the tension, and a servant announced that there was a visitor, a woman who had claimed to have important information and needed to see the Arl.

Teagan waved a hand to allow her entry.

Koza stepped in and Alistair’s expression brightened, reassured by her presence. Teagan did the opposite, tensing at the intrusion.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Koza said, looking between Alistair and his uncle. “I need to ask a favor.”

Teagan regarded her with narrowed eyes and a grimace of distaste. “Who are you?” 

Before she could reply, his eyes went to the guisarme strapped to her back, which Koza supposed could be mistaken for a staff. “I told the guards that no mages were to be allowed into the castle proper. I demand that you leave now,” he said, standing up menacingly.

“I’m not a threat to you,” she said, raising her hands in a sign of peace. She took a half step backwards, ready to leave should the Arl prove unreasonable.

“Uncle, no. This is the friend I was telling you about earlier,” Alistair said at the same time, halfway out of his seat.

Teagan backed down and studied Koza more carefully. Alistair had mentioned a friend he was traveling with, a country girl he had known for years. Alistair spoke of her the way Maric used to speak of Rowan.

The woman was not what he had expected from Alistair’s tales. She met Teagan’s eyes easily with a look declaring she thought them equals. This was a woman who was used to being listened to and considered it her due. Unless Teagan was mistaken, she was no simple country girl. He gave a small bow of his head and waved his arms open. “Then by all means, take a seat, Lady…Koza, was it? A friend of Alistair’s is always welcome in Redcliffe, especially such a lovely one.”

He took Koza by the arm and pulled out a chair for her, much to both her and Alistair’s consternation.

“What is this favor you have to ask of me?” Teagan asked once they were all situated and had been given a glass of wine by a servant. 

“I believe it will help both of us,” Koza replied. “I want some of the mages from Redcliffe.”

Teagan bid her to continue, intrigued and eager to hear how he may be rid of some of his burden.

Unused to playing the role of emissary, Koza watched her words carefully. This was a delicate task and stepping on toes could lead to good people dead. 

“There are mages who want to leave but are tethered by the other rebels,” she told him. “The rebels’ power is in their unified front, after all, and already mages have been killed for disagreeing with the cause. If they are to be able to leave safely, they will need an excuse. A writ from the Arl would be enough, for a small group. Tell them Redcliffe is beyond capacity, that other lands have opened their doors so they don’t all starve in their asylum.”

Teagan leaned back in his seat and considered her proposition. He liked the idea of the mages leaving, but it couldn’t be that easy. The last thing he needed was for Redcliffe to end up on fire. Eventually, he asked, “and where will they go?”

“Some to the Inquisition, some to other places. The important part is that they wouldn’t be here anymore,” Koza answered.

“If only you could take all of them,” he joked, slowly reclining in his seat. He was starting to like this brash woman. Alistair chose his friends well.

Koza flashed a grin and leaned forward slightly. “I intend to, eventually,” she answered blithely. 

Both Alistair and the Arl coughed on their wine.

“The Inquisition needs the mages to close the Breach,” she explained, ignoring Alistair’s sputtering. “However, the leaders of the mages have their heads so far up their asses that they refuse to even meet with us. The Inquisition will have to find an in with them, but once they do, I promise you that the mages will leave.”

Teagan studied the woman seated in front of him. From what Alistair had said, she was a pawn, plucked up the Inquisition due to her skill with farming. That was not what he saw. She held herself like a leader and spoke with authority. If she was a pawn to the Inquisition’s forces, he would eat his own boot.

His nephew always had liked to find commanding people to follow.

“I will lend you my aid,” he said finally. “It will be good to get rid of some of them. I did not expect my hospitality to be taken advantage of quite so thoroughly once her majesty started directing mages here.”

\----------------------------------

As Koza had predicted, the writ from the Bann settled the rebel mages enough for her to lead thirteen mages and a little under thirty tranquil through the gates of Redcliffe the next morning.

Zophia, a former circle mage and long-time partner of Triss’s, managed the tranquil. They followed her command without question, as biddable as tired sheep. Triss fell in step beside her, heckling the taller woman about the general behavior of circle mages. 

The two of them made a strange pair, one short, plump and pale while the other was tall, guant, and dark, but they worked well together and Koza was almost certain that they were partners in business and in bed, but that was no business of hers.

Meanwhile, the other mages, eleven men and women brave enough to seek a different life, followed after the herd of tranquil, huddled up and talking amongst themselves.

They traveled slowly and at high alert, Koza scouting constantly for rogue Templars or a response from the ‘Vints. No attacks came.

Alistair, meanwhile, was walking at the head of the group silently, deep in thought. He had been quiet all morning, barely saying a word to Koza or their new companions as they departed. 

By midday, he moved to walk next to Koza, catching her attention.

“Koza,” he called. His voice was too high strung, putting Koza on edge. Alistair knew that something was up, and Koza’s ruse was at an end. “Is there a reason why we’re leading a small army of mages and tranquil to your farm instead of Haven? Please tell me you have a plan here.”

Koza winced and tucked her hair behind her ear in a nervous tick. She had hoped, somehow, that Alistair would just ignore their new companions. 

Even though they had known each other for years, Alistair knew very little about her. He made many assumptions, and Koza allowed him to. Lies by omission, really. 

Still lies, though.

Alistair knew her as the farmer who lived peacefully in the middle of nowhere and fed him goat cheese when he visited. It didn’t take much to keep him and her business with the Grey Wardens separate from her other business – the one with the spies, slaves, and mages.

But things had changed. She hadn’t expected to pick up a group from Redcliffe, but she couldn’t just leave them behind. She had already seen a couple of ocularum dotting the hillside. She would have just killed the Tevinter Magister and ended it there, if she could have, but that had the potential to change things too much and in the worst way. The second-best option had been to get as many people out as she could. There was no going back and changing it now.

“Do you remember what I promised the Grey Wardens,” she prompted, easing her way to the difficult conversation.

Alistair looked confused by this non- sequitur. “Yes, a safe haven,” he said slowly, watching her closely. She looked far more nervous than he thought this conversation warranted. Her hand went to her hair again.

“More than that,” Koza said. “I offered safe passage too, as in making you disappear. I’m quite good at making people disappear.”

Alistair looked horrified and Koza hastened to correct that particular misunderstanding.

“Not by killing them! I help people get from one place to another unnoticed, help them travel safe from those who hunt them.” It wasn’t as though she went around making people disappear by killing them. At least, not often.

Koza took a deep breath and settled herself. This would be a long explanation, and she wanted to do it right. The anxiety from all of the potential ways he could react buzzed under her skin like thousands of angry bees. Would he be angry at her for lying? Would he hate her for her actions?

“There were a lot of farms and homesteads left empty after the blight,” she began. “Too many were dead and a lot of folks thought that the soil was poisoned. I needed work and people needed food. That’s how I got my farm. I found a place that had been abandoned and I petitioned the Bann for permission to use the land.”

Alistair nodded, not really sure where this was going. He wanted to place a hand on Koza’s shoulder to soothe her, but he could tell that now wasn’t the time.

Koza continued. “It didn’t take long for my farm to get full. I know a lot about farming. More than most people around here anyhow, and my farm did well.”

She had been surprised at how primitive farming was in Ferelden and the rest of Thedas. They had no concept of commercial farming nor many good agricultural practices that she would have considered intuitive. It hadn’t taken much for her to corner the market.

“A few years, and I was turning a profit and I had more farm hands than I knew what to do with because word had gotten around that I paid fairly and that I didn’t care if someone was…magically inclined. The only problems was that we ran out of space. More people needed work, and I knew a way to help. I knew there were other farms out there, left to rot. The land doesn’t deserve to be abandoned like that, and there were so many people going hungry and cold.”

Koza took another deep breath and continued to stare at the path in front of her, not wanting to see Alistair’s reaction. He meant so much to her, but their relationship was circumstantial at best. They were friends, sure, but she didn’t know how strong of a bond it was, especially when she was telling him how she wasn’t who he thought she was. She could only be so brave.

“I didn’t expect it to become so big,” she admitted, her feet moving slower across the ground as she lost herself in the memories. “It was just, I planted this seed, not knowing what it would become, and it began to grow. I just wanted to be able to help those who came looking for safety.”

And they had come. At first it was just displaced locals who heard that she had a soft heart and warm food. The first apostate hadn’t stayed long, but he apparently stayed long enough to know her views on magic. He had sent word to a friend of his, and that friend sent word to another. Some she had just given food as they went on their way, but others had wanted to stay and settle down. She empathized with the desire to set down roots. The main house and the sheds had filled before she knew it, and she had known she would need more land if it were to continue.

“I got one of the farm hands to petition another Bann for a farm to the north and then another to the west. Before long, we had a chain of farms stretching the length of Ferelden. It changed then. We were moving supplies and equipment between the farms regularly, and it’s really easy to move people when you have near constant shipments going back and forth across a country. Seven people travel out with the wagon, seven people travel back with it, no one notices if they’re the same people or not. We started with mages who didn’t want to be trapped in the Circles. None of them were bad people; they didn’t deserve to be imprisoned for their abilities.”

Alistair’s hand closed on her shoulder. He didn’t look angry, but he didn’t look happy either.

She knew him to be sympathetic to the plight of mages, but did that extend to freeing them from the Circles against Chantry law?

Koza continued, wanting to get it all out before she lost her voice. Alistair’s face was normally so expressive. To see it so closed off to her…well.

“Eventually, we got involved with slaves. My,” her voice cracked slightly as she remembered her reasoning and her past. “– my brother was involved with breaking up human trafficking. I grew up knowing that slavery was wrong, but the stories he would tell about children who had been sold to abusers, about broken, hurt and starving people who had no power…I had to. I couldn’t go about my life knowing that I was doing nothing to help those who were being forced into servitude. So the farms and our ‘friends’ spread to Orlais, Nevarra, Starkhaven, even Antiva, giving us a lot of shared borders with Tevinter. Even in Tevinter, there’s plenty of people who don’t like slavery, you know? It didn’t take much to get in contact with them. It took time, and a lot of the farms and safe houses aren’t mine, we just have a partnership with them, but we have a network going across most of Thedas.”

Alistair was stone-faced as he looked at her. It took several minutes for him to speak. “You know, this isn’t what I was expecting for today,” Alistair said, flustered and betrayed. “I thought you were a farmer.”

“I am,” affirmed Koza. “Just with a few more farms and a couple of hobbies.”

Alistair didn’t look placated. “Hobbies like undermining nations and setting up a massive underground organization. How many people are involved in this, this thing of yours?”

Koza had to think for a moment. Between the farms, merchants, and informants, there was a lot to keep track of. “Full time and aware of it? Somewhere around seventy, but during the height of the farming season, we usually have over two hundred, though most of them don’t know the scope of it,” she admitted. “With our contacts, I can’t even begin to tell you.”

Alistair marched woodenly by her side, his movement stiff and automatic. “Your qunari friend, Lorn, knows about this? What about the others?”

Like Koza could keep much from Lorn. The two of them had practically lived in each other’s pockets for several years.

“Of course they know. They run most of it. Toph and Ephiran were among the first I helped. The circle wanted to make Ephiran tranquil, said he was too volatile, and Toph got him out. We helped Rex escape Tevinter only a few years ago, and he signed on to destroy the slavers. He’s the one who keeps track of any intel. Lorn takes care of the day to day affairs, especially since I’ve been spending most of my time with the Inquisition.” 

Silence fell between them. Koza buzzed with nervous energy until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She pulled away from Alistair and went ahead to scout. Alistair needed time to think and come to his own conclusions. Until then, she would keep busy. Busy meant less time to worry.

Later, after they had set up camp for the night, Alistair found her seated on a log by the tree line, watching over the tranquil. He stood in front of her, blocking her view of the camp. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, breaking the still of the night. “In all of the years that we’ve known each other, why didn’t you ever say anything?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Why hadn’t she told him?

She tried to, once or twice, but the words never came. She would go to tell him, but then he would smile at her and tell a silly joke or just wander around like he didn’t have a care in the world. Knowing would have ruined that.

“I didn’t want to burden you with it,” Koza replied bluntly. “You’re a Grey Warden. You have your own life and your own duties. My farm was a temporary stop for you, nothing more.”

Alistair’s eyes flashed with anger and his voice rose in volume. “You didn’t think that I would want to know? That I would want to be worried about my friend who was putting herself against the Chantry and Tevinter?”

Koza glared back at him. It wasn’t as though she had kept the information from him maliciously, and it wasn’t something that you could slip into casual conversation like ‘oh, would you like some berries for your porridge? Also, I just helped a couple of mages become apostates and pissed off a magister last night. Pass the sugar please.’ Couldn’t he see this was about him and not about her?

“You had no responsibility towards me,” Koza told him. “You have no responsibility towards me. I consider us friends, but I saw you what, once, maybe three times a year if I was lucky? You were always off on the next adventure, Alistair. You didn’t need to know.”

Alistair’s ire grew. “And what if you needed help?” he argued. “What if the Chantry found out that you were involved with escaped mages from the circles and they came for your head? What then? You’d be hanged if they knew what you’ve been up to. You shouldn’t be involved in all of this.”

Koza couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He was the one who always talked at length about having to help people, about how he wished he could have helped them more. Was he really trying to argue that she shouldn’t do the same?

“What would you have done if I told you?” Koza goaded him, leaning forward with her temper high. She knew she wasn’t thinking straight, but she was just so worn out from all of the worrying. “Would you have hung around, shoveling manure and collecting eggs on the off chance that Templars would burst down my door? Would you have abandoned your duties as a Grey Warden to pluck weeds because a Magister might come to set me on fire for freeing his slaves?”

Alistair deflated, his shoulders slumping as he looked for the right words. “I don’t…”

Shit. He was pouting.

“I didn’t want to burden you with that,” she said, finally, her anger evaporating when she saw the torn look on his face. She had no right to be angry with him. That anger was directed at herself. She had lied to him for years, and she would deal with the consequences. She needed him to understand why. 

“I just wanted to be Koza, the silly farmer who would feed you and give you a soft bed to sleep in. I wanted the farm to be a place where you could escape from the worries of the world. I’m sorry for lying to you, but I’m not sorry for why I did it.”

Alistair watched her, though she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He looked sad and angry, but also something else that she couldn’t name.

He turned on his heel and marched off without another word.

Koza looked up at the stars and tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. She had brought this upon herself. She had no right to be so upset. 

“Done with your domestic?” Triss asked, pitilessly drawing Koza from her melancholy reflection. “Men. They aren’t worth the trouble that you put into them."

With a weak chuckle, Koza composed herself, trying to return to a calmer frame of mind. She was the surefooted goatherd – this was nothing more than a rock in the road. No matter what, she would follow the path forward. Duty came before her feelings.

Triss plucked absentmindedly at the grass as she watched Alistair march back to his tent. “He going to be any trouble? Looks former Templar to me. That sort always starts shit when they’re pissed.”

“You can trust him,” Koza said. “It’s my fault that he’s mad, and he knows who to blame. Alistair is a good man. He won’t bother you.”

Triss snorted and rolled her eyes as she threw a handful of grass at Koza before turning to leave. She had never been the nurturing or patient sort. 

“He better not bother you either, or I’ll light his prissy arse on fire,” she called over her shoulder.

\----------------------------------

Rolling over for the nth time, Alistair gave up on sleep for the night and punched the ground. The pain lancing up from his knuckles was a nice distraction from the horrid whispers of the calling and the thoughts that wouldn’t leave his mind.

Maker, he was such a fool.

A restless energy had him stirring again, and he crawled out of his bedroll, unable to lay still for a moment longer. He might as well take watch, if he wasn’t going to sleep. 

The campfires had been put out, and the Tranquil and the mages were asleep in huddles in the small clearing. There weren’t enough blankets and bedrolls to go around, but the grass was soft and the night was warm. 

Alistair could see one of Koza’s mage friends, Zophia, up on the hill, watching for Templars or other problems in the night. Though it was early, he walked up and relieved her of the watch.

Unlike Zophia, he didn’t sit on the hill, still in the night. His watch was kept with a constant patrol around the campsite.

It felt better to be moving. If he stopped moving and listened to the quiet around him, he might just scream. 

However, moving didn’t help him escape his thoughts.

He had been deceived, and even worse, he had deceived himself. 

He knew Koza was smart and knew that there was something strange about her farm and her people. Andraste’s sake, she lived with two apostate mages, one of them a qunari, an ex-Templar, and a former Tevinter slave. Nothing about that was normal.

But he had wanted to believe.

Maker, he wanted to believe that there was one place, one damn place in Thedas that was peaceful and happy.

Now he knew that even that was a lie.

Stupidly, he kicked a rock in his path. Now he had throbbing toes to go along with the pain in his knuckles and none of it made him feel any better. The desire to scream was still there, to shout all of his frustrations out to the stars. There were so many years of resentment and regret that had built up until he could feel them with every breath.

What Koza must think of him. Obviously, she thought him inept. That much was clear. Probably thought he was stupid, too.

She ‘didn’t want to burden him.’ Ha. More like she didn’t trust him.

How could he protect her if he didn’t know what he was protecting her from?

She had opened her home to him. She had given him a key and told him he was welcome any time. She had no idea what he would do to keep that.

\----------------------------------

The rest of the journey to the farm was quiet. Alistair was avoiding her, and Koza wouldn’t be surprised if she woke one morning to find him gone, off to pursue Clarel and the Wardens or just to get away from her. It was probably better that way; he’d be safer.

However, even with those doubts hanging over her head, she couldn’t be down when she saw her farm, her home. 

She gave a keening call and delighted in how it echoed off the hills. In the distance, her goats bleated out an exuberant reply and she heard the excited barking of her mutt. 

Goose, in all of his canine glory, came barreling from the farm, not stopping until he had knocked Koza down and was licking her face. She ruffled his fur, knowing that her tears would be hidden by his licking. 

From the fields, Toph ran over and pulled Goose off before lifting Koza from the ground and into a bear hug. 

“You’ve been missed,” he said. Never a man for many words, he let his actions do the talking for him as he squeezed her tightly and Koza got the message loud and clear. No matter what, this farm would be her home, and the people on it would be her family.

Koza returned the hug, before demanding that the giant of a man put her down.

From the farmhouse doorway, an angry looking mage shouted at them, his hands waving agitatedly as he blinked sleep from his eyes. It was midday, but he still wore his nightclothes. “What in the Maker’s ass is all of the noise about? Can’t a man take a fucking nap around here? Andraste’s tits, Koza, it was quieter around here with you gone.”

Koza had missed them all so much. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. “You’re as sweet as ever, Ephiran,” she crowed. “I just couldn’t stay away from you and your honeyed words any longer.”

“Shove it up your ass,” he replied, making a rude gesture at her. “Not only did you disappear for almost a month, but you came back with the dumbass Warden and a shit-ton of tranquil. What in the Fade? Do you expect us to deal with this?”

Ephiran liked to act a hardass, but Koza saw the contained grin on his face. She blew him a kiss and linked arms with Toph as she strolled towards the house.

Ephiran was gearing up to go on another rant when he was pushed out of the way by a vexed Lorn. The qunari woman strode across the yard in large steps, quickly covering the distance between her and the much smaller human woman. 

“You are well?” Lorn demanded, inspecting Koza from head to toe. “Things have been acceptable here, but your absence has been noted.”

“I’m well,” Koza confirmed. “I can’t begin to thank you for all that you’re doing. You really are a wonder.”

Lorn glowered and looked at the gaggle of mages and tranquil standing sheepishly behind Koza. “So you thank me by bringing more work. Typical.”

“You don’t get all of them,” Koza joked. “Some are coming with me to Haven.”

Despite the complaint, she knew that Lorn would get the rest of them through, to safe havens across Thedas, protecting them from the unrest in Ferelden and from becoming ocularum. 

The others had chosen to join the Inquisition. Koza would do her best to make them safe there as well.

\---------------------------------

It was clear that, even with a warning letter sent to Leliana, Haven was not prepared for Koza to arrive with guests. She could hear the hushed whispers and feel the watching eyes as she walked through the town with seven tranquil, Triss, and Zophia in tow as she made her way to the Chantry. The tranquil were unperturbed by the attention, but she could tell that Triss getting antsy. 

“You sure we’re welcome here?” Triss whispered as a man paused his work in fixing a hut to stare at them as they went past. “I will set you on fire if we’re run out of town by an unwashed mob.”

“There may be an adjustment phase,” Koza allowed.

At least Josephine was happy to see them. The Inquisition always needed more healers, and Triss and Zophia were more proficient than most. They were sent off to the healing tents without delay. The tranquil were another story. Everyone in Haven was shorthanded and could use diligent if dull workers, but Koza had plans. It took nearly half an hour, but she finally managed to convince Josephine to let her have five of the seven tranquil as her workers, though she did have to promise a bottle of Antivan brandy and a few hours of work for Threnn.

Josephine seemed to expect Koza to put the tranquil to work on her growing farm, or with organizing tasks around Haven, but that wasn’t her plan at all. 

The classes that she had taught in the evenings after work was over were one thing, but now it was time to start something a little more ambitious. The Inquisition and its people needed a school.


	6. Chapter Six: In night there is counsel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine is lovely as always and is not flustered, no matter what anyone says.
> 
> Koza is very bad at keeping secrets and holding grudges. Luckily for her, so are Adaar and Alistair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule is once a week.
> 
> Feed back is always welcome and I love all of your comments. Please let me know what you liked and what you want to see. I could always use some more ideas!
> 
> Let me know if there's anything you think that I've forgotten or if anyone seems OOC.
> 
> Also let me know if you see ways that I can improve my writing.
> 
> Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (I could use an editor if someone is willing to lend their skills)

Ch. 6

Daily Almanac Advice: “In night, there is counsel.”

-.-.-.-

It was late in the evening and the day had passed too quickly.

Josephine, if pressed to describe her current state of mind, might use the phrase ‘mildly-distressed.’

Her assistant would describe her as being in a tizzy. The normally organized and collected Antivan was digging through the piles of letters on her desk, muttering furiously to herself.

She had been inundated with requests, negotiations, and meetings for weeks. Letters and messengers had been set out to all of the major and minor houses of Orlais, and she had already begun to receive word back. She had barely been keeping her head above it all, and now she had misplaced an important dossier that Leliana had put together for her on the Fereldan nobility. The letters should have been written last week, and she barely knew where to begin.

What she wouldn’t give for a bottle of Antivan brandy and a few dozen underlings.

She heard someone enter her office, but didn’t bother to look up. Her assistant could handle them for now.

“Lady Montilyet is busy,” Josephine heard her assistant insist. Hopefully, the visitor would leave it like that. She simply didn’t have the time to entertain anymore concerns or complaints for the day. “I’ll not have you bothering her. If there’s something you need, you can come back tomorrow.”

“Is there something I could help with?” Came the reply.

Help would be good. Preferably before stress caused Josephine to do something like sending misguided nobles to Cassandra. 

Josephine looked up from her desk and considered the Inquisition’s farmer and supplier. Leliana had told Josephine that the woman was connected to a network of spies and informants in Ferelden. Perhaps she would know information on the noble houses. “No, you must be terribly busy,” Josephine demurred. “I couldn’t possibly impose. Though, if you do have the time to spare…”

Koza tilted her head to the side and gave Josie a small smile. “It’s no trouble at all. I need to keep my hands and mind busy. Let me help,” she insisted. “What can I do?”

Koza would never consider spending time with Josie a chore, and she was eager for anything that would keep her hands and mind busy. Anything was better than going back to the room she shared with Alistair where the Grey Warden would ignore her as he had done for a couple of days now.

Reading Koza’s willingness in both her voice and posture, Josephine grabbed a quill and began to write a list of names. “You are familiar with the nobility of Fereldan, yes?”

Koza gave the question a moment of thought. She tended to avoid the nobility when she could. It was much easier to live and work below their notice than in it. “Familiar as in I’ve heard about them,” she replied. “I’ve only met a handful, and only a couple might know me by name.”

Josephine regarded her shrewdly. She knew prevarication when she heard it. Koza wasn’t outright lying, but she was speaking too carefully for it to be the whole truth. “Do you know much about them? Their personal lives, any hobbies or proclivities?”

“Depends on what you need that sort of information for.” Koza’s head was cocked to the side again as she watched the Ambassador, curious as a watchdog. 

Josephine rewarded her with a wry smile. “Would you be willing to write down what you know of the major houses of Ferelden?”

“If it will help the Inquisition, fine,” Koza said. 

That was good enough for Josephine.

She passed the list of names to Koza and requested a board and set of writing supplies from her assistant.

“The Inquisition has been requesting support from the noble families across Thedas, but we have been remiss in contacting those in Fereldan. It is mostly my fault, I fear, as I am not as familiar with the Fereldan nobility as I would have liked. If you could, please write what you know about those on the list.”

Koza skimmed the list quickly. She knew almost all of the names well and knew tidbits of their families and personalities. She didn’t know enough to blackmail or bribe most of them, Rex knew that information much better than her, but she could pen personalized notes to each. “If you would like, I could write some drafts,” she offered to Josephine, looking to ease the stress that had gathered in the Antivan’s face. “My nan made sure I was taught how to write a proper letter and Ferelden’s tend to need less of the flowery prose and formalities than Orlesians.”

Josephine clapped her hands together. “Excellent! That would be most acceptable.”

The assistant returned shortly, shoving a small writing desk and supplies at Koza. She wrinkled her nose at the dirt on Koza’s hands and boots and did her best to avoid touching the farmer.

Koza resisted the urge to chuckle at the elitist behavior. It had been a long time since she felt shame for dirt or signs of physical labor. She did allow herself a small revenge in allowing mud to flake to the floor as she toed off her boots and made herself more comfortable to write. 

Josephine watched discretely as Koza settled in on the small lounge set against the wall and tucked her legs underneath. The writing desk fit well on her lap, and the quill sat comfortably between the farmer’s index finger and thumb as she dipped it in the inkwell. 

One problem solved for the moment, Josephine’s work went quickly as she sorted through the requests that were constantly piling up on her desk. A request for information from a duke, a request for more laborers from Threnn, and a request for a mediator between groups were all deftly dealt with. 

Meanwhile, as they worked, Josephine and Koza slowly began to talk, sharing the latest gossip and news. It was nice, friendly and girlish in a way that Koza hadn’t experienced in too long. Stories of progress in Haven soon turned to more personal stories. Koza made Josephine giggle over a story about Mae Jerring’s unfortunate mishap with a triple berry pie and a druffalo while Josephine had Koza shaking her head in disbelief over the debacle a pair of crow wannabes had gotten into with the attempted assassination of an Antivan prince who had never existed in the first place. 

In the lulls of the conversation, Josephine occasionally hummed snippets of songs and silly little melodies as she worked. The noise, unintentional and happy as it was, bolstered Koza’s spirits and made the time pass quicker. 

Hours passed before Koza finished. There was a teetering stack of folded letters piled next to her on the lounge by the time she was done and there was a horrid cramp in her hand. She hadn’t written that much in one go since her days at university. She added drying powder to the last letter and blew on it gently before she folded it as well, adding it to the top of the stack. She set the writing desk to the side and gathered the letters together to place them by Josephine. 

Quietly, in an attempt to not disturb the busy ambasadore, Koza took her leave. Still, Josie wished her a good night distractedly and the farmer left.

Soon after, Josephine’s attention turned to the stack. She grabbed the letter from the top and unfolded it quickly to assess its contents.

She was surprised. 

The letter was well written in a clean, precise hand. Not as formal as she would have done, but it was truer to Fereldan culture. This letter was addressed to Bann Alfstanna and included mention of the Inquisition’s desire to work with and aid Templars still loyal to the chantry. Her memory jogged by the letter, Josie recalled Leliana mentioning that Alfstanna’s brother had been a Templar. 

Another letter, further in the stack was addressed to Teyrn Cousland and focused more on the union the Inquisition hoped to bring between Fereldan and Orlais in closing the breach. She assumed that the Teyrn must have some favorable ties to Orlais…hadn’t he been married to an Orlesian woman?

Leliana would have to read the letters over before they were sent off, but they would need little revision otherwise. Josephine gave a chuckle at how Koza had signed off on all of them with ‘sincerest regards, K. Assistant of Lady Josephine Montilyet, Ambassador of the Inquisition.’ It seemed horribly proper and reserved of the normally blunt and forthcoming woman. She wondered who had taught her to write so formally. 

There was a knock at the doorway, alerting Josie as Leliana strode into the room.

“You seemed to enjoy your evening with the farmer,” Leliana teased, appreciative of the more relaxed cast of Josephine’s shoulders. The position of ambassador of the Inquisition had brought new lines to the face of her young friend.

Josephine was altogether unsurprised that Leliana had been listening in on her conversations with Koza. Her friend was both protective and had been keeping a close eye on Koza as though she were an enemy agent instead of a reliable asset. 

“She was pleasant company,” Josephine replied. “I do not know why you insist on keeping such a close eye on her. She seems sincere in her endeavors.”

Leliana perched on the corner of her dear friend’s desk and looked pensively up at the ceiling above the doorway. She had a faraway look in her eyes as she thought about the information she had gathered. “She is not what I expected.”

“Oh? How so?” Josephine watched Leliana’s face attentively. The Nightingale was well trained in schooling her expression, but when it was just the two of them, she tended to relax just a little. Josephine had long since learned her tells. 

“She is not as shrewd as she thinks,” Leliana said. “She is too soft to be a proper spy master, and sometimes, she is quite hasty. It is only by luck that she hasn’t been caught before, that and she has loyal people working for her.”

Leliana was silent for a moment, thoughtful still. She trusted Josephine as much as she was capable of trusting anyone. She could trust Josephine with this truth too. “There was a letter, delivered to Divine Justinia weeks before the Conclave,” she murmered, her voice taking on the cadence of a bard telling a familiar story. “It appeared on her desk with no one knowing how it got there; it was a breach of security, and was handled as such. The letter was kept, only because of its suspicious origins; it would have been ignored otherwise.”

There was a wry smile on Leliana’s face and Josephine’s heart broke for her friend. Leliana had loved the Divine, as a mentor and surrogate mother. She had taken the loss hard, and with everything that had happened afterward, there had been little time for Leliana to mourn. Josephine placed a hand on Leliana’s knee, bidding her to continue.

With gentle fingers, Leliana picked up one of the letters Koza had written and looked it over as she spoke. “The writer claimed to have seen a vision. The Divine often got letters from those claiming to see visions from the Maker. As with the others, we took it as a joke, the ramblings of the insane. The person who sent it claimed that the Temple of Sacred Ashes would disappear in a blaze of green light and that everyone inside would perish. They said they had seen it happen and that the blast would cleave a hole in the sky. They warned that, should Grey Wardens be spotted near the Temple, we should evacuate it immediately, as they would be a sign of imminent danger. Preposterous, really. It seemed impossible…until it happened.”

Josephine’s eyebrows were drawn together, her mouth open in a soft ‘oh.’

Leliana took a battered, folded letter out from her pocket and passed it to Josephine. It was unsigned, but a signature was not needed.

The handwriting was the same as that on the letters Koza had written earlier.

-.-.-.-

With slow and heavy steps, Koza returned to her room at the Tavern. Alistair was still avoiding her, and it had become awkward to share space with him. 

She considered sleeping in the loft of the stables just to get some distance, but found it occupied by Blackwall and she would sooner sleep in the snow than put up with his snoring.

Alistair didn’t greet her as she entered the room though he may have already been asleep. It was very late.

They both slept in the same room that night, her in the bed and him on the floor. They woke together in the morning, and Koza tried to greet him and draw him into a conversation. Alistair refused to meet her eyes and remained stonily silent. 

Koza couldn’t imagine hating Alistair, but in that moment, she came close. His continued avoidance was wearing her patience thin and Koza knew she was nearing a breaking point. 

-.-.-.-

At least she had other concerns to keep her busy.

Her fledgling school, though it hardly deserved that title yet, faced some severe growing pains. Once the time and place of the classes became well known, the people of Haven arrived. Unless one was from a wealthy family or pledged to the chantry, literacy was hard to come by but highly valued. Even the poorest urchin could understand the value of being able to read a shop name or a work contract.

Every evening, they crowded around Koza in the small clearing next to the tavern; young and old, human, elf, and dwarf all were interested in learning. She couldn’t keep up. There weren’t enough slates to go around for practice in writing letters, there were too many questions, there was never enough time.

Koza conceded that she needed help.

Tranquil did not make good teachers. They had no passion for any subject and their monotone voices could bore even the most avid learner. However, tranquil made wonderful assistants and guides. 

All of the tranquil Koza had claimed as her own knew how to write and read. Those were skills taught at most every circle. But one of them, a man by the name of Enrik, had been in charge of the Circle’s stock room due to his knowledge of general arithmetic. Another, an elf woman named Gabril, had been an archivist before she was made tranquil and had been put in charge of a library afterwards. So all told, she had three assistants for writing and reading, one for math, and one for history.

It wasn’t a bad start. 

In the cold hours before the day had begun, earlier than the sun rise, Koza could often be found in the otherwise deserted tavern, drawing up a schedule and a curriculum for her fledgling school. Flissa regularly arrived at the first call of the day to find Koza with the candle burned down to the quick, surrounded by sentence diagrams and pictures illustrating phonetic principals. 

In the hour after dinner, Koza wove lessons around myths and legends and everyday problems, some from Thedas and some from Earth.

So boasting boldly while battling a bear, Tyrdda Bright Axe was used to illustrate the many uses of ‘B.’  
And when a hydra lost a head or three to the mighty Grecian hero’s sword, a tally would be added to count the new number of heads that would grow. 

Longingly dreaming of classrooms divided by skill level, chalkboards, and textbooks, Koza made due with what she had.

She would not allow the Inquisition to be a force that would fail its people. If people were willing to give their time and their lives for this cause, she would be damned sure that they would be provided with the tools they needed to have better lives once the dust settled. 

Person by person, she could help equality grow in Thedas.

-.-.-.-

On a break for the first time in days, Koza could be found in the stables, treating a horse for mites while she waited for Adaar to return from Val Royeaux. She grit her teeth against the guilt she still felt at her refusal to accompany him a couple of weeks ago. She made the right decision in traveling to Redcliffe, she affirmed to herself. Adaar’s trip was a safe one; he would return fine and not hold a grudge against her.

It would be fine. Adaar was fine.

But, she considered, what if someone in Val Royeaux had taken a swing at him, or if he got seasick on the boat trip, or if the Orlesians were overly cruel with their words?

What if Adaar hadn’t been eating properly while he was away? The Vashoth often got distracted during mealtimes, and if she didn’t remind him to eat during dinner, he often wandered off from a half full plate. Cassandra wouldn’t remind him to eat.

The horse snorted and stomped a hoof, drawing Koza’s attention back to the present. She shook her head to rid herself of the foolish thoughts. She was thinking like a proper babcia or worrying auntie. Adaar was an adult, for all that he was a young one, and he could look after himself. 

She still worried. 

A call went up, and the traveling party reached the gates on tired mounts.

Koza waited with the horses, helping the stable hands gather and care for the incoming horses.

It wasn’t until Adaar himself walked into the stables that she slowed and her worries were banished. He greeted her with a shy smile and an insecure duck of the head, and she couldn’t help herself. She darted forward and pulled him into a large hug. They may have only known each other for a few weeks now, but Adaar had wormed his way into her heart as a younger brother. Her hands could not fit all the way around his back, but she did her best to hold him tightly and let him know that he had been missed. Surreptitiously, she looked him over for injuries and was relieved to find none. He looked healthy and well.

“I have a present for you,” he said excitedly once they parted, bouncing up on the balls of his feet, energized by her open affection. “It’s in the bottom of my bag, but I can bring it to you later.”

“I have a present for you too,” Koza said, leaning in as if she were telling him a secret. “Brought all the way from Redcliffe. We can do a proper exchange over dinner in the tavern, if you have time.”

Adaar nodded excitedly before he was dragged off to a war council by a grumbling, travel-weary Cassandra. 

Later, as they were seated side-by-side in a corner of the tavern, he presented her with a small chocolate brought back from Orlais, wrapped prettily in a little box tied with a red ribbon. It was lavender flavored and even had a tiny sprig of lavender pressed to the top of it as a garnish. The sentiment caused Koza’s throat to close tight. 

“It reminded me of you,” Adaar said, ducking his head to the side as though embarrassed by the admission. His fingers plucked at her sleeve where she had carefully embroidered lavender blooms and daisies. 

Unable to speak without embarrassing herself, Koza nudged Adaar’s side fondly, thanking him for the chocolate before presenting him with a worn book with a faded cover. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but when he opened it, Adaar found himself fascinated with the detailed drawings of flowers and plants that filled the pages. Absentmindedly, his fingers traced along the painstakingly drawn dawn lotus. 

“It’s wonderful. Thank you,” he said, his eyes never leaving the book.

Koza was content to watch Adaar flip through the pages, warmed by Adaar’s obvious love for his gift. It had been a trial to get Triss to part with the book. The fiery mage hoarded books like a dragon with gold. But once Koza had seen the pages filled with the flora and fauna of Ferelden, she knew that Adaar would love it. It would also serve as a useful field guide that would hopefully keep the naïve Vashoth from picking anything poisonus on accident. She had already had to steer him away from stinging nettle twice

She was surprised that she had received a gift in return, but the thought of that, too, warmed her. It was a thoughtful gift, and she found herself tying the bit of red ribbon around the end of her braid, to keep the memory after the chocolate was gone.

Eventually, Adaar managed to tear himself away from the book and told Koza of his trip.

Travel, though still rough, was becoming easier on him, and he had enjoyed sailing. The soaring buildings of Val Royeaux had stunned and awed him. The golden lions made him wish to see a real one. All of the masks were disconcerting, but the food was as good as Koza had promised him.

“Cassandra apologized to me,” he told her, somewhere in the middle, hushed as though he were sharing some great secret. “After I did what you said and tried to stand up for myself a bit more, she apologized. I apologized too, for not being who she wanted. That’s how I know I wasn’t sent by the Maker. No one would have picked me on purpose.”

“On purpose or not,” Koza told him, “I’m glad we have you. You are gentle in a world where life is not. You are kind and sweet even to those who are harsh. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you picking elfroot for Mother Giselle or giving flowers to Cassandra. You are hardly the worst person who could have ended up with the mark and the ability to seal rifts.”

Adaar was still contemplative and somber. His self-doubt and anxiety were painfully familiar, though he wore them on his sleeve while Koza had learned how to abate them with age and hide behind a mask of calm. She leaned into his side and strived to lighten his mood.

“Just imagine if it had been Seggrit,” she said as she gently pulled a cloth napkin from Adaar’s hand before tore it with his near constant fidgeting. “Mark or not, someone would have thrown him into a rift by now, and it would probably would’ve me! Or imagine it being Chancellor Roderick. He would refuse to do anything until at least five ranked members of the Chantry signed off on it in triplicate.”

Her words hit their mark, and Adaar chuckled. To further take his mind off of his role, she asked him to tell her more of his time in Val Royeaux.

She laughed at his descriptions of meeting Sera, a ‘sharp, crazy ball of arrows,’ and Vivienne, a ‘terrifying dragon woman.’ 

Adaar seemed equally terrified by Sera stealing breaches but not weapons as he was by Madame de Fer freezing a guest in place. He was more terrified at the way Koza simply laughed at his retelling as though those were completely normal events done by normal, rational people. 

Then again, Adaar had heard some of the twisted things Koza shouted in battle. He swore she had threatened to feed an attacking merc to their own mother. Koza looked normal and acted normal most of the time, but she was scary in her own right.

The night wore on and the tavern began to clear out, leaving Koza and Adaar alone in their own little corner. It was the kind of situation that lent itself to the sharing of secrets.

However, before Koza could initiate the new line of conversation, Adaar brought it up.

“Varric said something, in Val Royeaux. He said that he has a group of spies, but he also said that you do too. Are you a spymaster too, Koza?”

Koza tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and sighed. Hopefully Adaar’s reaction would be much milder than Alistair’s. 

“No,” she answered, truthfully as she could. “At least, I wouldn’t consider myself one. I have an…organization of sorts, that deals in information, but it’s with a specific purpose. Instead of information for information’s sake, we use information to move people fleeing oppression and slavery.”

And so she quietly told Adaar of her group and their work across Thedas. He had many questions, which she expected of him. Adaar always had more questions. 

In turn, she asked Adaar about his life, asking about his time with the mercenary group and the time before that. 

He was telling her of the day he discovered his magic, a day that he accidentally frozen a pond, when she admitted to having a magic-tangential ability despite not being a mage.

This prompted even more questions, testing the limits of her understanding of it and going far beyond. Eventually, with the tavern practically deserted, he convinced her to show him, and she twisted a bit of the veil to show the overlap of the Fade plane with their plane.

Instead of anger, or fear, or discomfort, Adaar greeted this revelation with delight, running his fingers through the small window of green Fade. He asked countless questions about the spirits she had met and the places she had seen in the Fade. She promised to introduce him to Curiosity. 

The two of them would get on well.

It wasn’t until Adaar started leaning against the wall, yawning, but still asking questions, that Koza realized how late it had gotten.

She ushered Adaar off to bed, promising to answer the rest of his questions at another time. 

-.-.-.-

Koza was still in a good mood as she entered her room for the night, but that mood soured when Alistair, already in his bedroll on the floor, pointedly turned away from her as she entered. 

She was done with his nonsense. Koza considered herself a patient person. You couldn’t grow crops and tend animals without being at least a little bit patient. She had given Alistair the space he needed to think. She had tried to be understanding, giving him the time he needed to come to terms with this new information about her and her life.

But it had been over a week. Over a week of walking on eggshells around Alistair. Too many days of stress and anxiety building as he refused to talk to her or even meet her eyes. Days of him giving her the cold shoulder and turning away any time she tried to talk. 

She couldn’t handle it any more. This limbo was worse than any possible outcome she could imagine. 

This silent treatment was a special kind of hell.

Decided, she approached.

“Alistair, could we please talk for a moment?”

Alistair kept his back to her and didn’t respond.

Koza took a deep breath, letting it fill her lungs to the brim, before exhaling to a count of ten. 

“Hello, Alistair’s back. It’s a rather lovely night, isn’t it?” Her voice was calm but sharp as a knife. “I don’t suppose Alistair himself is going to talk to me?”

Alistair remained silent.

Koza’s patience, frayed and worn for days, finally snapped.

“So that’s how it’s going to be from now on?” she said to Alistair’s back. “You’re just going to pretend I’m not here? No ‘hello, how are you, let’s talk about this?’”

She walked to his bedroll and stood directly behind his head, her arms crossed and a snarl on her face. She knew she was being ugly, but she couldn’t stop herself. “If you don’t like what I do, fine. If you don’t like who I am, fine. If you want me to never speak to you again, fine. But you have to talk to me first. Be an adult and tell me what’s on your mind instead of ignoring me and driving me up the wall.”

“What, like you talked to me?” Alistair asked peevishly.

Koza prayed for more patience – however much any god listening would be willing to give her. She wanted to cry and shout and throw things but she wouldn’t be that person. She wouldn’t let her temper and her anger turn her into that type of person. She loved Alistair beyond reason, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to throttle him.

“That was different,” she snapped. “That was me not telling you something because you honestly didn’t need to know about it. It’s not like you ever asked me about who I was or what I did. This, this here is you ignoring me and acting like a child.”

Alistair rolled on his back and glared up at her. Finally, he was meeting her eyes. Those brown eyes were narrowed and angry as Alistair replied. “Not so different from how I see it. You kept this from me. On purpose!”

Koza snorted. That was rich. There were a lot of things that she was keeping from a lot of people. She wondered how he would react if she just blurted out that she knew he was Maric’s son. She could tell him that she knew who his mother was when even he didn’t. Wouldn’t it just be hilarious if she told him that she knew about his actions and words throughout the Blight, that she had seen them as if she was there through a computer screen, something that didn’t exist in Thedas because she was from a place that didn’t exist in Thedas. What would he do then? 

He’d probably have her committed to some sort of insane asylum. 

“And you’re not keeping things from me?” she countered. “There’s nothing about you or what you do that I don’t know? People keep secrets Alistair, often for good reason.”

Alistair sat up, his spine rigid and his shoulders up to his ears. “I’m not so sure about that. What was your ‘good reason’? Don’t tell stupid Alistair so he doesn’t mess things up?” His voice was harsh and accusatory. 

That made Koza pause. “What? That was never part of it. I never thought you would mess things up, and I certainly never thought you to be stupid. I didn’t know how to tell you in a way that wouldn’t change things. My ‘good reason’ was that you were happier not knowing.”

The moment the words left her mouth, she realized how shitty it sounded. ‘You were happier not knowing.’ She would be infuriated if anyone ever said that to her.

“I wanted to be able to protect you,” Alistair growled. “I always thought that you were safe on your farm, and if anything threatened you, I could handle it. Now I find out that the all the times I imagined defending you from hordes of attacking nugs, you were off fighting entire nations without me.”

As usual, Alistair deflected with humor. Koza wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it, but she took the out. While all the anxiety had her itching to hit something, she didn’t want to fight with him. “You imagined my farm being attacked by nugs?”

He accepted the out as well, his shoulders dropping slightly.

“They’re creepy, alright? But that’s not the point. The point is, I can’t be there to protect you if I don’t know what I’m protecting you from.”

Koza scoffed at that. If he thought that she would ever hide behind him, waiting to be saved, he knew nothing about her. She would never put him at risk like that. He was so much more important than that.

“I don’t need you to protect me. That’s not your job and even if it were, it’s too one sided. If you want to be there for me, I’d rather be back to back, fighting together,” Koza explained as she sat down on the floor beside him. “I wish I had told you about, back when this all started, but I didn’t, and I can’t change that now. So I need to know, are you still okay with me? Are we still friends, or would you prefer to just be acquaintances, allies but nothing more?”

She placed her had on the floor palm up, fingers loose and non-demanding. 

Alistair took the offering and placed his hand in hers. She could feel the fine tremor in his hand as he laced their fingers together before letting go.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” he joked weakly. “I think- I think I still need some time to get used to it. You’re not the person I thought you were, but I don’t think it’s a bad change. I just need time to adjust.”

Koza patted Alistair’s shoulder and lifted herself to her feet. “Then I’ll give you time. Thank you- for talking to me and for trying to understand. You’re one of the best people I’ve ever known and I promise that I never, ever kept this from you because I thought you were stupid. You’re rather quick-witted actually. It’s more that your opinion means a lot to me.”

With her back turned to Alistair, Koza missed the way her words made him blush, his hand reaching up to grasp the polished metal key he wore on a chain around his neck and kept tucked beneath his shirt.

Koza blew out the candles, and they both went to bed, sleeping better than they had in days.


	7. Chapter Seven: Better an hour early and stand and wait than a moment behind time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Koza plays nursemaid for the Commander and has some eye opening discussions with other Inquisition members.
> 
> Next time: The Iron Bull, midnight discussions with Alistair, and the Mage-Templar decision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amari was mentioned once in chapter four, but now she gets a proper introduction!
> 
> Warning for this chapter - discussion/depiction of withdrawal and vomiting - if this is a problem for you, stop reading after the tent and resume reading at "Krem began another lap..."
> 
> As always, feedback both positive or critical is greatly appreciated. I hope you all enjoy the update!

Ch. 7

Daily Almanac Advice: “Better an hour early and stand and wait than a moment behind time”

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Morning light found Koza in the training fields under Grishka’s hawkish gaze. There was a steady thunk-thwak as the budding soldiers practiced fighting with a buckler and a spear. Koza had been paired with a farm boy who was too shy to meet her eyes. His hands kept fumbling with his weapon and more than once the blow he was supposed to be blocking smacked his fingers due to his incorrect grip. 

At first, she was gentle, guiding his hands and feet where they needed to be. It didn’t work. 

Time and time again, she corrected his movements, but he didn’t listen.

“Lift your shoulder,” she barked, and the boy flinched.

“Widen your stance,” she ordered. If anything, the boy moved his feet closer together, growing more off balanced.

Frustrated, Koza threw her buckler into the snow and lunged forward to grab the boy’s spear, pulling it from his grasp easily and waving the pointed end at him. 

His eyes were wide and frightened as he watched the sharp tip dance from his navel to his throat. 

“You,” she growled. “If you can’t take this seriously and if you don’t want to practice, get. Out. Of. Here. Go find work in requisitions or building. You aren’t cut out for this, and right now, you’re just wasting my time.”

The buckler dropped from numb fingers as the boy turned and ran as though hounds were chasing him and Koza was left standing with two spears and no partner. 

A dark chuckle was the only sound in their small training area. Grishka smiled at Koza wolfishly.

“I was wondering when you’d show your teeth, girlie. Good on ya. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you sad lot,” Grishka said, addressing the rest of the recruits. “If ya don’t shape up, flower girl here will scare the piss out of you. If you’re unlucky, I’ll do it. You’re dismissed for the day, girlie.”

Red cheeked, Koza acknowledge Grishka’s order and placed the spears and bucklers back on the rack. The other recruits watcher her warily as she left, whispering among themselves until Grishka bared down on them again with harsh commands. 

In her newfound free time, Koza wandered off to inspect the rest of the troops, but found the training fields oddly subdued. It was quieter than usual, even for the early hour. There was a feeling of tension in the air. Koza crossed the field to the tents on the outer edge and approached Lysette.

“Did something happen?” Koza asked the ex-Templar. “It feels quiet this morning.”

“The Commander’s put Rylen in charge for the day,” Lysette told her. “Official word is he’s doing work for the Nightingale. Local word is he’s taken sick.”

Koza frowned and resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration. This wasn’t her fault, but it was kind of her fault.

She had let the situation with Cullen go on to long. Lyrium withdrawal was a serious matter. 

Thanking Lysette, Koza set off at a light jog. She would fix this problem and, if her luck held, cause three other problems by the time she was done. She grabbed what she needed from her room at the tavern and commandeered a small space in Adan’s hut.

She set a pot over the flame, and the water quickly came to a boil as she threw in a handful of herbs. The liquid turned a light green color as she stirred, but the addition of another handful turned it a murky, darker color. She hummed a rhyme to keep time as she stirred, not wanting to over steep the mixture. 

Lyrium withdrawal was not an unknown to her and she had knowledge that most didn’t.

The Chantry had been known to burn books and destroy knowledge if it didn’t suit them. Information about lyrium was included in that. But just because they tried to destroy the knowledge didn’t mean that they were successful. Ideas were hard to execute and books had a way of popping back up.

A cache of such books had popped up several years ago, right into Koza’s hands.

The Fallow Mire was a good place to hid things and people. The twisting rock faces and hidden caves were innumerable and many of them were further obscured by the constant shifting of wet and dry in the marshlands. An apostate who had taken refuge at Koza’s farm for a few short days had paid for their stay with information about a hidden stash of books in one such cave, likely from the Black Ages.

One of those books had been on herbalism and early alchemical medicine – a priceless treasure to those who could decipher it. There had been a recipe for the treatment of ‘Dwarven mania accounting from blue wytching stones – the blue ague.’

The Chantry would have a difficult time controlling their Templars if lyrium addiction could be treated with a few plants and some animal ingredients. 

Too bad for them. Koza had very few qualms about overthrowing the Chantry’s status-quo.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It took frightfully little convincing to get the soldier standing guard to let Koza in to the Commander’s tent. A few words and an easy smile got the dull man to stand to the side and allow Koza easy access. Either she had been added to a list somewhere, or the Inquisition’s security was much too lax. She thanked the soldier and entered with a steaming mug in her hand and a box hidden behind her back.

The inside of the tent was dark and cold as Koza pulled back the flap. The furnishings, though they hardly deserved that title, were sparse. Cullen’s belongings were meticulously organized with military precision, stowed away, but Koza could see a contained area of chaos in the forms on his desk. 

The Commander himself was curled up on his cot, a rusted old thing that was no more than a taut cloth strung on a bare metal frame. Cullen barely stirred at her entry. His shirt and hair were damp and dark with sweat.

“Commander, do you have a moment,” Koza asked, keeping her voice quiet. It was likely that the Commander had a migraine along with his other ailments.

“Now isn’t a good time,” Cullen replied, looking more worn and pinched than Koza had ever seen him. His voice was reedy-thin and weak. 

“That makes it the best time,” she countered, placing the mug on his bedside table. Her gaze flicked to where his sword was propped against the desk before refocusing on the Commander. “You’re going through withdrawal.”

Cullen’s eyes shot to her, red-rimmed and fever glazed. “What are you talking about?”

His face was pale but for bright, fevered spots of red on his cheeks. Sweat made his face look waxy in the dim light and his entire body shuddered with a slight tremor. Here was no commander of armies, but a sick man struggling to maintain himself. 

Lyrium withdrawal was so much worse than what they had shown in the games. In the games, it was relegated to the background, only shown in bouts of anger or insanity. It made sense, in a sad way. The harsh reality of withdrawal and the associated complications had no place in entertainment. She had seen the way that withdrawal clawed at the minds and ravage the bodies of Templars over the years. She would spare others from that same fate, if she could.

“It’s obvious, if you know the signs,” she said bluntly, knowing full well that she was cornering a man who could order her execution once he was well again. She wondered which was stronger – his moral compass or his loyalty to the Chantry.

“I’m fine,” Cullen ground out, his body tense.

“No, you’re really not.”

Cullen groaned as he rolled over to better face her, and Koza was pretty sure he was going to throw up. 

He didn’t but just barely. 

“This is my burden to bear,” he managed to say between the dry heaves. “It won’t affect my role within the Inquisition.”

Koza gave him a deadpan glare as he struggled to find the strength to lift himself in to a sitting position. “Really,” she said dryly. “Do you think that you’re the first to ever go off of lyrium?” 

“I have seen the effects of lyrium withdrawal,” he said. “Rest assured that Seeker Cassandra is keeping an eye on my condition. I know that withdrawal kills more often than not, but I am confident in my current abilities.”

“I have a cure for it,” she told him. “It will help ease-“

“No!” The force of his denial took most of Cullen’s strength and he lay pale and panting in the bed. “No,” he repeated, quieter this time. “I’ll not take the coward’s way out. I will never take lyrium again, even if it kills me.”

Koza needed more patience for all of the stupid stubborn people she was surrounded by these days. She had no time or pity for the Commander’s self-imposed penance.

“Find another way to kill yourself, Commander,” Koza ground out, her voice laced with steel. “Right now, you’re trying to take the stupid option. I’m not offering you lyrium, and I’m not offering you death. Withdrawal doesn’t have to kill, and I won’t let it kill you.”

She moved forward and sat on the edge of the bed, taking advantage of Cullen’s inability to force her to move. “Listen to me and I will help. I’ve helped Templars escape this before.”

“How?” Cullen had a look of hungry desperation beneath the pain.

Koza helped him sit up and passed him the still warm mug. It smelled awful, but Koza was pretty sure Cullen’s nose was so clogged up that he couldn’t smell much of anything. Still, the murky grey-green color was off-putting too. Cullen eyed it suspiciously

“I found an old alchemy book with a remedy for a type of lyrium sickness,” Koza explained. “I think it was meant for those who were exposed to it accidentally, but we found that it worked for chronic exposure too. A friend, tried it, and it helped. So we played around with the formula until it really worked well. He says it still tastes like shit, will make you feel like shit at first, and was a bit pissed that it took so long for me to realize that we could use goat’s milk instead of ram urine in the recipe, but that’s not important.”

She held out the book-sized box that she had brought with her. “There’s a mixture of herbs, minerals, powdered goat’s milk, and a few other ingredients in here, along with directions for preparation and a recipe for if you run out. You’ll need to drink it twice a day, every day for it to work.”

She met his eyes firmly. The next part was important for her own safety. “Don’t let Chancellor Roderick or the Chantry know. If they knew that there was a cure for lyrium withdrawal, weakening their hold over the remaining or future Templar…,” she trailed off, allowing Cullen to draw his own conclusions.

He took the box from her with a trembling hand. “If this works-”

“It will work,” she said with confidence. “It’s worked on Templars before you, and it will work on those who need it after you.”

Her tone held no room for argument. It would work.

The conviction in her eyes gave Cullen more hope than he had felt in months. If he were honest with himself, it gave him more hope than he had felt since his life fell apart with the fall of Kinloch. 

“It won’t be pleasant though,” she warned. “The first few days will have a lot of vomiting. Stomach cramps, dizziness, and lightheadedness too. But after that, well, after that it’ll be better. One of the former Templars described it as ‘the song fading to silence,’ if that means anything to you.”

Cullen took a large swig from the mug but started coughing at the acerbic taste and the stinging sensation it created on his tongue. Koza thumped him firmly on the back.

“Easy does it,” she said. “Your stomach’s going to feel pretty rough in a few minutes. If there’s someone I can get for you, to watch over you for the day, tell me.”

Cullen looked horrified. “Maker, no,” he choked out. “They can’t know.”

He had the look of a man who couldn’t be persuaded otherwise.

She should have asked earlier, before he took the drink. He needed someone there so he wouldn’t drown in his own sick. Koza felt like kicking herself for that oversight.

She looked around awkwardly. “It’ll be worse if you’re on your own. I can’t, in good conscious, just leave you without someone here. If there’s no one I can get for you, I’m going to stay.”

“I can take care of my-,” Cullen began, but was stopped short as his stomach rebelled. Koza was faster with a clean chamber pot thrust under his mouth before he could get sick all over the floor.

“Yeah, no,” Koza said, wrinkling her nose and gently patting Cullen on the back as he heaved again. Cullen groaned, and Koza took that as a sign of defeated and consent. It was more of a sign that the cramps had hit and Cullen was in pain.

Once the heaving stopped, she helped lower him back onto the bed and went to the entrance of the tent.

She kept the flaps closed as she poked her head out and gained the attention of the dull guard.

“Pardon,” she said. “The Commander’s not feeling well, and I’m going to need some help. Ask the first kid you see to fetch Amari for me. If you’re smart, you won’t tell anyone else about this save for maybe Cassandra or Sister Nightingale.”

The guard left, and Koza settled in for a long day with a sick commander. 

Amari practically fell into the tent not ten minutes later, dodging around the guard rather than explaining who she was. She tied her dark hair back behind her pointed ears as she stood at attention before Koza, panting slightly. Orphaned by the explosion at the conclave, and only twelve years old, she was the de facto leader of the children of Haven and Koza’s second in command of the gardens. 

“Reporting for duty, Ser. What’cha need?” The girl’s eyes were keen and sharp as she looked around the tent, widening slightly as she took in the state of the Commander on the bed before settling back on Koza. 

Koza both thanked and cursed the heavens for kids too grown for their age. Amari could be counted on to follow orders, keep quiet, and to slip by unnoticed.

“I’m working from here today because the Commander is ill and needs someone to keep an eye on him. I need you to be my runner. He’s going to be sick quite a bit, so I need you to clean out the pot and fetch things for me.”

Amari, bless her scheming, clever heart, gave a fox’s smile. “What’s in it for me?”

“Half a bag of dried apples with the next farm shipment,” Koza offered.

“A whole bag,” Amari countered, mimicking Vivienne’s disinterested, aloof stance. Koza would bet gold that the young girl had practiced that stance in front of a mirror. 

“Deal,” Koza said, “But you have to keep quiet about anything you see or hear today.”

They shook on it, and Amari was off to refresh the chamber pot and grab Koza’s things.

Cullen let out a dismal groan. “Just leave,” he grumbled. “I have no need for a nurse maid.”

“You’ll change your tune when the runs hit you and you can’t stand up to relieve yourself,” she promised him. "Nothing's more uncomfortable than having to sit in your own shit."

Cullen tensed and managed to lift a hand to his face and cover his eyes. “No. You can’t – I forbid- you won’t be helping with that.”

“Only way you get me to leave is if you stand up and push me out of the tent. You manage to do that, and I’ll go.” Koza sat on the uncomfortable wooden stool behind Cullen's desk and crossed her legs. 

Cullen tried to sit up, but was gripped by more stomach cramps and trembles. This time, there was no chamber pot handy and he coughed up bile over the side of the bed. 

Later he would beg and shout, trying to get her to leave before he embarrassed himself. Koza helped pull him out of the bed and loosened the ties on his trousers when his trembling hands couldn't grasp the strings.

“I’ve helped women and animals give birth and I’ve treated more illnesses than I can count," Koza informed him. "This is only embarrassing if you let it be. Otherwise, it’s just one person helping another through a difficult time. Embarrassing would be having the Inquisition’s Commander drown in his own vomit.”

Cullen called her names, his embarrassment and pain turning into rage, but no amount of verbal abuse or entreaties could get Koza to leave. He was ashamed that she was there to observe his weakness, but she would not go.

At times Cullen felt humiliated, reduced to an invalid in front of a woman he barely knew. When he heaved, she held a pot under his mouth to catch the sick. When he needed to use the chamber pot, she helped him stand, her head turned to the side and her eyes closed, but still there.

In the end, she had her way. She spent the day at his bedside, wiping his brow, helping him through the worst of it. Amari came and went with broth and papers from Josephine.

As Cullen, exhausted and weak, fell into a fitful doze, Koza eased him in to sleep, humming old Polish lullabies softly. The tunes both alien and comforting to his resting mind. Koza was tired and mildly annoyed, but Cullen's reaction was hardly the worst she had ever seen. One of the Templars she had tried to help in the past had held her at sword point, so all things considered, the name-calling wasn’t that bad. 

She woke him once at the dinner bell to give him a plain porridge brought by Amari and another cup of horrid remedy.

The next time he awoke, it was to birdsongs greeting the next day. Koza was gone, and there was another steaming mug on his bedside table with a folded note tucked under it. 

His head felt clearer than it had in months. His stomach, on the other hand, still felt like he had eaten a live nug that held a grudge. He lifted the mug to his lips and groaned. 

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Krem began another lap around Haven looking for someone to speak with. Bull had entrusted him with making contact with the Inquisition, and he refused to go back empty handed.

So far, he had been told that the commander was ‘indisposed,’ the ambassador was in a meeting, the quarter master had run him off due to his accent, and he had been chased away from the chantry by an angry-looking woman in heavy armor.

Finally, noticing his plight, a dwarf had told him to look for a human woman named Koza. Apparently, she was the one to talk to if he wanted work or assistance. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know where she was. He had already checked the training field, the tavern, and the stables, only to be told that she either hadn’t arrived yet or that she had already left for somewhere else.

Luck was on his side though, as he caught the attention of a petite woman leaving the Commander’s tent with a pile of papers tucked under her arm. 

“Hello there,” he greeted her, subtly wincing at the way she focused on him shrewdly, likely in response to his accent. “Do you know where I could find Koza?”

She gave him the most peculiar look before squaring her shoulders and looking at him the way Bull did when he thought Krem was lying.

He revised his mental assessment of her from servant to possible soldier. She was small, but that had never stopped Dalish or Skinner.

“And who are you to be looking for her?” the woman countered. 

He couldn’t quite place her accent. It sounded mostly Ferelden, but there was a hint of something else. 

“The name’s Cremisius Aclassi,” he said. “I’m with the Bull’s Chargers mercenary company. We’ve got an offer for the Inquisition. I’ve been having a hard time getting anyone to talk to me. I was told that Koza was the person to go to.”

Oddly, that made her relax. Usually people got more tense when he mentioned he was part of a mercenary company. Maybe she had heard of them before. 

“The Bull’s Chargers? That sounds interesting,” she said coyly. “There are plenty of mercenary groups out there. Why should the Inquisition be interested in yours?”

“Ours is the best,” Krem replied. 

She moved her head slightly, looking at something over Krem’s shoulder. “Adaar,” she called out. “Come over here for a moment. There’s someone you should meet.”

A qunari, likely the Herald he had been sent to talk to, shuffled around the tent dutifully and looked at Krem with open curiosity. “What do you need, Koza?”

A large grey hand settled on the woman’s, Koza’s, shoulder.

Krem looked at Koza masking his surprise well. She gave him a playful smirk.

“There’s a mercenary group that wants to show the Inquisition what they’ve got. If they’re anything like Ser Aclassi here, I think they’ll be a good fit. Why don’t you take him to Josephine and see about setting up a meeting?”

Adaar nodded and followed her advice, leading Krem off to the Chantry. 

Later that day, Koza heard a rumor that the Herald was off to the Storm Coast soon and she smiled. She was looking forward to meeting Bull and the rest of the Chargers.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

After watching the woman run back and forth several times over, Vivienne decided that something simply must be done. 

“Darling,” she called out, halting Koza from leaving the chantry. “Do come here for a moment.”

Curious, Koza did as she was bid and greeted the former court enchanter, introducing herself with a small bow.

“I know who you are, dear,” Vivienne, sprawled redolently in her chair, informed Koza with a haughty air. “It’s impossible to get anything of quality in this dreadful little town without going through you or the dwarf.”

“If you want to place an order, it’ll have to go through Threnn.” Koza was unsure of Vivienne’s motives, but she knew that the Iron Lady did nothing without reason.

“No, dear, this is about you.” Vivienne rose from her chair and walked a small circle around Koza like a cat sizing up a mouse. She looked Koza up and down, taking in the simple but clean clothing, the colorful embroidery, and the dirt under Koza’s nails. “You run about all day, going from person to person, when you should be having them come to you.”

She stopped, standing directly in front of Koza again. “You are in a position of power. You should not let it go to waste.”

Koza stood stiffly and gave Vivienne a confused look. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding here,” she said. “I’m a worker for the Inquisition, just like a couple hundred other people. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“You may dress the part of worker, darling, but only a fool would mistake you for one. Too ignore influence such as you wield would be…unwise.”

Koza didn’t like where this conversation was going. She was unsure of Vivienne and her motives, but she knew that the mage was like a dragon; if you showed a sign of weakness, you’d be eaten alive. Koza knew to be wary of sharp teeth. “And I suppose you’d like to direct me in how to use it,” she retorted.

Vivienne gave a coy smile.

“Of course not. Unlike our dear Herald, you are not the type to allow others to command you. However, with power comes treachery. You would do well to have a mentor, someone to advise you on your path.”

“I have goats for that,” Koza answered drolly. “I find that they are much more impartial and better than people at finding the right way to go. I appreciate your offer, Lady Vivienne, but I’m afraid I have to decline. I would not abuse my friendship with Adaar or any of the others in the Inquisition in such a way. I have no use for a mentor in manipulating people. I imagine I would be a disappointment in that area.”

A slight frown of displeasure graced Vivenne’s face, as elegant as the rest of her.

“Though you may try to deny it, you are manipulating the entirety of the Inquisition. You have set up a school, have you not? You are controlling the flow of information, shaping minds and deciding what is accepted as fact. The Chantry and the circles have used such methods for centuries.”

Koza didn’t manipulate people. She wouldn’t. Was she?

She felt doubt trickling in. She was trying to change things, she was withholding information, and she was shaping the Inquisition into what she wanted it to be. She didn’t want to think of herself as manipulative, she was just…showing that there were other choices.

“I’m not trying to control what people know. I’m trying to give them the tools to make up their own minds. I teach them how to read, not what to read.” Her argument felt thin, even to her.

Deliberately, a soft hand covered a smirking mouth. Vivienne hid her amusement from Koza’s eyes all the while knowing that Koza could see it. She saw Koza’s hesitance. “Do you truly believe yourself to be unbiased? And don’t think anyone has not noticed your evening chats with the Herald. You speak with him, give him comfort, purpose, motivation, but to what end? Your words change him, whether you intend it or not. It is far better to know the effect you are having and have tight control over it.”

Vivienne could see that her words were striking a chord within Koza. 

“Armies can be stopped; ideas cannot,” Koza replied after much thought.

Taken aback, Vivienne’s charming smile fell from her face. “What was that, darling? Are you speaking nonsense now?”

“No,” Koza replied. “I was agreeing with you. I read it somewhere years ago, and it’s something that I can’t imagine forgetting. You are right, Lady Vivienne, but not completely. I am influencing the Inquisition, by giving its people the right and access to ideas, but I don’t do it to further my own agenda. These people, Adaar included, are willing to fight and die for our cause. I use my influence to make sure they will survive it and come out better for it at the end.”

“You are idealistic,” Vivienne told her, with little amusement.

Koza would take idealistic. Idealistic would be what she needed to accomplish her goals, but idealistic was also dangerous. She gave a half-grin to Vivienne. “And you are pragmatic. I hope that we can be good allies and temper each other’s more extreme views.”

Vivienne inclined her head with a secretive smile. “I do believe that we can work together well, my dear. I look forward to our conversations. You are hiding a keen mind behind your current façade.”

That told Koza what she wanted to know. Vivienne was someone else who thought she was pretending to be something she was not. They didn’t accept that she was common, but she knew what she was. She might be a foreigner to Thedas, a stranger from a different world, but that didn’t change her background. She was common, but that wasn’t synonymous with weak.

“It’s not a façade,”Koza replied, her smile all teeth. “I’m not secretly a princess, a savant, or a rich man’s daughter. I’m what the old guard fears. I’m what happens when everyone has access to education and ideas. As are you, Lady Vivienne. Knowledge is a great equalizer between the privileged and the populace.”

When Vivienne arrived at the next night’s lesson, offering to teach a lesson of her own on Orlesian history, Koza was unsurprised. Vivienne wasn’t the sort to let opportunity pass her by. 

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Walking around Haven at dusk was peaceful. Koza pretended she was doing an inspection as she walked the perimeter, but the walk really served to help her gather her thoughts and unwind from the day. The cold air made her feel awake and the snow made her work for every step. She appreciated the burn in her thighs.

She was gazing at the moons rising over the lake when she caught a flicker of light in the corner of her eye.

In the distance, half hidden by the hoop houses, Amari looked very small, crouched next to the magically growing frond of a fern in the snow. Her face was lit by the glowing blue light in her hands as she whispered soft words to the young plant. She was shivering slightly in the cold, and the tips of her pointed ears were red from the frosty air, but she didn’t seem to notice, enthralled as she was in coaxing the plant to grow.

Inch by inch, Koza saw the fern stretch upward, twitching as it grew supernaturally fast, curling and uncurling around itself. Her lessons yesterday had made use of tale of the summer holiday where ferns were said to bloom with a rare flower of incredible power. She hadn’t thought that Amari, usually so solemn and serious would be taken by fairytales, but then again the girl was only a child and lived in a world with magic. She looked around to make sure that no one else had noticed the young elf. Magic may be accepted from Adaar or Solas, but there were still plenty around Haven who feared it.

“It’s not Noc Kupały, it’s not going to bloom,” Koza teased as she approached, startling the girl into falling backwards. Koza smiled at her, but the smile quickly faded as the girl tried desperately to back away.

“It wasn’t what it looked like, I swear it. I ain’t no mage,” the elf girl pledged. Her eyes were wide and fearful.

Koza crouched down on the ground, making sure that her hands were visible and empty. “It’s okay if you are,” she said gently. “I have nothing against mages. Adaar is a mage, and he’s my friend. No one is going to hurt him or try to put him in a circle, right?”

Amari shook her head violently, her dark hair obscuring her face. “That’s different,” she argued. “He’s the Herald of Andraste. Nobody can make him do nothin’. Bein’ a mage is dangerous, so I ain’t no mage.”

“The Inquisition is reaching out to mages. Adaar is going to Redcliffe in a couple of days to speak with them. He wants to have the Inquisition be a place where it’s safe to be a mage.”

“No,” Amari argued. “He’s goin’ to Redcliffe ‘cus he was told to. I heard it from the Commander. He knows that bein’ a mage is bad.”

“The Commander has seen a lot of bad things done by mages. But look at what you can do,” suggested Koza, encouraging Amari to look at it in a different light. Children should never be taught to fear their talents or their nature. Seeing such deep, ingrained fear in Amari’s eyes was breaking her heart. “You’ve made the fern grow. Isn’t that amazing? I’ve seen mages do wonderful things. A friend of mine can mold fire into fantastical shapes to tell stories. Another friend can heal wounds so well that there aren’t even scars left. I know magic can be scary, but so can blades or horses. You know, I often wish that I could use magic.”

A pair of small eyes peered up at Koza through thick, black bangs. “You do?”

Koza nodded. “Imagine being able to make a field grow faster so that more people could be fed, or being able to lift stones too heavy for even Seeker Cassandra. It would be a very useful tool. I’d use it to muck out the stalls in the stable from a distance so I wouldn’t have to smell them,” she teased, pinching her nose closed.

“Magic can do that?” Amari had seen the worst of magic. She had seen abominations and people burned alive. She’d never seen magic used for the things that Koza was describing. It sounded too good, too useful to be true. Why would people kill with magic when there were so many other things they could do?

“It doesn’t have to be all fireballs and ice spires,” Koza replied wiggling her fingers for dramatic effect. “Just like a blade can be used to kill a ram or cut a rope, you can choose how to use it.”

Amari looked thoughtfully down at her hands. “But what about demons?” 

She heard them whispering as she fell asleep, promising her power and promising to bring her dad back. Amari was no fool though. A promise from a demon was worth less than piss. 

“You’re strong,” Koza told her. “I left you in charge while I was gone because I know you have a resilient and powerful will. Have faith in yourself. The demons can only harm you if you let them in, and you can be trained to resist even the strongest demons.”

“Really?” Amari tucked her hair back behind her pointed ears. For once, she looked her age, her face relaxed and bright. “You think I’m strong? That I can be trained?” 

“You’re a leader,” Koza said. “Given time to grow, I have no doubt that you’ll be a force to be reckoned with. I have –“

Koza paused as an insidious idea crept into her head. She had been about to suggest that Amari seek out Triss to train her, but there was another option. Amari was quick, clever, and persistent. She had a certain force of will that was nearly unbreakable. Solas didn’t trust Koza very much yet and he was still distant with Adaar. Maybe Amari could get close to him. She knew that, at the very least, he would be kind to the young girl and, if he became her mentor, Amari would be safe from harm. The wolf protected his own.

It would be manipulative, but it could be a kindness too.

“I have a friend who can train you, if you’d like,” Koza told Amari, ignoring the pangs of her conscience. “You might have seen him by Adan’s hut. He’s very powerful and has never been in a circle. He also has many stories to tell because he’s explored the Fade.”

Amari’s eyes were wide and childlike. Koza’s stomach turned; what was she doing?

She helped the child to her feet and wrapped an arm around Amari’s slight shoulders as they walked together back to Haven, drawing the girl into her side.

Amari wiggled in closer and looked down at her hand, considering. She was strong. She was a leader. She could do magic.

Maybe that wasn’t so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dad!Solas any one? No one?
> 
> I'm doing it anyways :)


End file.
